mountains of california: creative reading

I'm not sure how much I've mentioned of this on the blog, but for my PhD, we have two sets of comprehensive exams. For the exams, we read about 150 books that span several centuries in both a primary and secondary field and then we write a 40-60 page written exam and take a 2-3 hour oral exam about those books. Well: my exams are coming. In the fall, I take the written exam and next spring, the orals.

My primary area is nonfiction of place and my secondary area is 19th Century British imperial fiction. Both of these are terrific, but unfortunately, I just haven't read that many books in either genre. This spring, my committee got together and we've hashed out a tentative book list (still more tweaking to come) so, in the past few weeks, I finally began reading.

Though I've been reading slower than I need to to stay on pace (yes: it's very marathon-like!), I'm finding I actually really love reading these books. It's wonderful; I just wish I didn't have to race through them. So far, I've read:

*Ecocriticism, Greg Garrard
*Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold
*The Solace of Open Spaces, Gretel Ehrlich
*The Mountains of California, John Muir

Somewhere midway through Leopold's Sand County Almanac, I had a crazy idea: I should try to visit every one of these places that's on my (primary) booklist & write about the process of reading/traveling/studying/theorizing...a new way of reading. It's very experiential education-ish which I love & would make reading/studying/remembering this stuff much much easier.

I haven't been able to get the idea out of my head. Will it work? I have no idea. But I've decided to try (well, within reason). I think, in order to have a little flex, I'm going to have to count some places I've already been recently, like, per the title of this post, The Mountains of California. Muir writes about Mount Hood, which I just visited in March (Mount Hood's actually in Oregon, alas.) Also, I'm reading a good bit on Norway, where I was last summer, but probably can't afford to visit again before next spring.

So, my self-imposed rule is that I must have visited said location during my PhD (so the last two years) for it to count. Otherwise, no dice. Thankfully, lots and lots of these writers are from and/or write about the Midwest (which will really help.) But, my first trip starts on Friday. I'm heading out through Kansas to Colorado and Wyoming and then back through Nebraska to Illinois, up through Madison and to my folks' house in Wisconsin. I'm hoping to scratch several authors/places off the list on this trip (Edward Abbey, Gretel Ehrlich, John McPhee, Aldo Leopold, John Muir, Terry Tempest Williams, John Wesley Powell, etc.)

Like I said, I'm not sure how much this project will or won't take off. But I think it's worth a good faith effort.