A friend’s book has just been published.
WINDSHIELD WILDERNESS
Cars, Roads, and Nature in Washington’s National Parks
David Louter
Foreword by William Cronon
(University of Washington Press, $35.00 clothbound, July 2006)In this engaging book, National Park Service historian David Louter explores the relationship between automobiles and national parks, and how together they have shaped our ideas of wilderness. National parks, he argues, did not develop as places set aside from the modern world, but rather came to be known and appreciated through technological progress in the form of cars and roads, leaving an enduring legacy of knowing nature through machines.
Louter traces the history of Washington State’s national parks — Mount Rainier, Olympic, and North Cascades — to illustrate shifting ideas of wilderness as scenic, as roadless, and as ecological reserve. He reminds us that we cannot understand national parks without recognizing that cars have been central to how people experience and interpret their meaning, and especially how they perceive them as wild places.
Looking forward to getting a look at the finished work: it has been a couple of years in the making, much of it sorting out photographs to illustrate the beauty of the book’s subjects — the parks we’re fortunate enough to have so close and accessible.