Rebecca M. Douglass, Author

I've been doing a lot of reading about travel, mostly accounts of travel or adventures/exploration. I'm also getting more interested in the philosophy and psychology of an activity that I greatly enjoy and at times feel driven to pursue. Title: The Meaning of Travel: Philosophers Abroad Author: Emily Thomas Publication Info: Oxford University Press, 2020. 261 pages Source: Library Publisher's Blurb: How can we think more deeply about travel? This was the thought that inspired Emily Thomas to journey into the philosophy of travel, to explore the places where philosophy and travel intersect. Part philosophical ramble, part memoir, The Meaning of Travel begins in the Age of Discovery in the sixteenth century, when philosophers first began thinking and writing seriously about travel It then meanders forward to encounter the thoughts of Montaigne on otherness, John Locke on cannibals, and Henry Thoreau on wilderness. On our travels with Emily Thomas, we discover the dar...

    Title: Satellites in the High Country: Searching for the Wild in the Age of Man Author: Jason Mark Publisher: Island Press, 2015. 320 p. Source: Purchase Publisher's Summary:  In Satellites in the High Country , journalist and adventurer Jason Mark travels beyond the bright lights and certainties of our cities to seek wildness wherever it survives. In California's Point Reyes National Seashore, a battle over oyster farming and designated wilderness pits former allies against one another, as locals wonder whether wilderness should be untouched, farmed, or something in between. In Washington's Cascade Mountains, a modern-day wild woman and her students learn to tan hides and start fires without matches, attempting to connect with a primal past out of reach for the rest of society. And in Colorado's High Country, dark skies and clear air reveal a breathtaking expanse of stars, flawed only by the arc of a satellite passing—beauty interrupted by the traffic of...