Weaving a Way Home

Using the author's archaeological research in two Upper Paleolithic caves as well as her personal experiences in sorting through her family's history and working in environmental education as a framework for examining the concepts of time, place, and human story, ""Weaving a Way Home"" explores the central themes of home, wildness, and ruins. Central to this framework are concepts of ""person as place,"" tragic narratives and their impact on the natural world, and the role of human evolution and the anthropomorphizing brain as a vehicle for reconnecting humanity with the natural world.In the tradition of writers Lewis Hyde, Barry Lopez, Peter Matthiessen, Joseph Meeker, Steven Mithen, Paul Shepard, Gary Synder, and Terry Tempest Williams, Leslie Van Gelder uses both creative nonfiction narrative and evolutionary biological theory to explore complex terrain. This book will appeal to readers of contemporary nature writing, ecocriticism, Native American studies, archaeology, architecture and design, religion, ecology, biological anthropology, and broad interdisciplinary thinking.