Autorentext

Obi Kaufmann is the author of The California Field Atlas (2017, #1 San Francisco Chronicle Best Seller), The State of Water (2019), The Forests of California (2020), The Coasts of California (2022), The Deserts of California (2023), and The State of Fire (2024), all published by Heyday. When he is not backpacking, you can find the painter-poet at home in the East Bay, posting trail paintings at his handle @coyotethunder on Instagram. His speaking tour dates are available at californiafieldatlas.com, and his essays are posted at coyoteandthunder.com.

Klappentext

A mind- and soul-expanding manifesto on connecting more deeply with the land called California.

Obi Kaufmann, author of The California Field Atlas and The State of Fire, now presents a gorgeous and provocative manifesto calling for a revived look at the Golden State. As Kaufmann writes, the popular idea of California as a place of novelty, riches, and self-reinvention has been shaped by 250 years of European American settlement. This view is so often rooted in economic exploitation, destruction of the land, and attempts at erasing Native histories. As climate breakdown accelerates and natural disasters escalate, Kaufmann calls on us to see the land we call California with fresh eyes. The boundless complexity of the flora and fauna around us prompts bold, imaginative questions: What words might connect us more deeply with the places where we live? What if a watershed can think? What if a forest has a mind of its own? Across five chapters full of wisdom and heart, Kaufmann tells poignant personal stories from his fifty years living in California. Designed in a handsome pocket-size format, and featuring watercolor maps and illustrations drawn from across Kaufmann’s career, California Inside Out is a call for awe and action.

Inhalt

One—Remembering and Reinventing California’s Origin Story Existential California / the California Floristic Province / the emptiness of nature vocabulary / why poetry means so much / ecological philosophy / traditional ecological knowledge / covenants on the land / climate history Two—California Is Fire The stages of grief and the nature of change / the grand instigator / megafauna, megafire, and the ubiquity of fuel / successional cycles / adaptivity and dependency / fire truths  Three—The Meaning of Birds When animals were people / the meaning of archetypes / stories as ecology / services versus gifts / the California Flyway / harmony / intelligence and aesthetic theory / remembering and loneliness Four—Thinking Like a Watershed The ecological body / globalization denied / water infrastructure / people and objects / the metaphysics of water / legislating life / personhood / respect and survival Five—The Mind of the Forest Theory of mind / disturbance and homeostasis / awareness in the old growth / unrecoverable loss of habitat spaces / fungal cosmologies / conscious space as a wave in the mind Acknowledgments Quotations from Recommended Reading About the Author A Note on Type