Introduction

1 Genre and Narrative in Nature Writing

A House with Two Doors
Fixing the Genre
Solitude as Story

2 Going Out, Going In: Narrative Logic in Thoreau's "Ktaadn"

First There Was No StoryExemplar and Paradigm
What "Ktaadn" Is About
Three Ways of Reading
Self Writing and Self Written
Losing the Human
Before the Beginning
The Cutting-Room Floor
"Where Away Does the Summit Bear?"

3 The Subject of The Desert

Negotiating "The Approach"
Cactus as Cross
Versions of Van Dyke
A Story of Reading

4 Familiar Mysteries: The Exemplary Wendell Berry

Day One: Pace, Presence, and Melancholy
Day Two: Afoot in the Woods
A Language of Meaning and Value
Berry's Exemplary Character: Some Social Uses of Solitude

5 Sites and Senses of Writing in Nature

The Scene of the Solitary Writer
The Nature Writer's Estate: "Writing" and "Living"
Beyond Doors: Writing on Site
Transcription and Entrenchment
The Cabin as the Windowed Site of Writing
Looking Up

6 Writer or Rhapsode? Iconic Metaphors for Literate Identity

John Muir: Nature Writing's “Natural"
The Mission to Entice
The Bread Problem
The Instruments of Literacy and "Indigen Wisdom"
Nature Savant and Literate Indigen

7 Keeping It Simple: Reinvention and Recovery of Nature in General Education

Retreat Scenarios in Student Writing
Cyborgs and Solos

Notes

Works Cited

Index