Ground Truth: A Geological Survey of a Life

FINALIST for the 2021 Oregon Book Award. Rooted in the Pacific Northwest, the essays in Ruby McConnell's Ground Truth: A Geological Survey of a Life cover the vast terrain of this region - from volcanoes to city parks, the eroding shorelines along the Oregon coast, badlands, lush forests, and city parks. Combining her background as a registered geologist, McConnell's essays also weave in personal landscapes composed of grief, loss, and optimism for the future of our environment. The Pacific Northwest that you see today is the result of forty years of radical changes in the culture and economics of what was once a resource-extraction and agriculture-driven region. They are changes so fundamental in nature and scope...that, for those of us from this place, will always be marked by the cataclysmic eruptions of Mt. St. Helens on May 18, 1980. --Ruby McConnell In this collection of 17 essays, geologist Ruby McConnell opens her part natural history, part memoir-in-essays about the Pacific Northwest with the cataclysmic eruption of Mt. St. Helens in May of 1980. She was two years old. Everything that I have stood direct witness to since, everything I know about this place, happened after we watched the mountain crumble... I was born to a region digging out. In poignant and wide-ranging essays that include the wondrous annual return of salmon, the lifeblood of the Pacific Northwest people, to working at an elementary school evaluating soil and wondering how many kids have cancer, Ground Truth is an extended eulogy to a rapidly changing land, population and society awakening to the realities of logging, climate change, land-use and pollution. The book illuminates the central role of landscapes in our ideas of home and self despite the growing disconnect between modern lifestyle and the environment. McConnell's timely and significant work reveals how the landscapes we inhabit can also help us better understand ourselves.

Author: Ruby McConnell
Publisher: Overcup Press
Published: 04/14/2020
Pages: 212
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.60lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.50w x 0.60d
ISBN: 9781732610323

About the Author
McConnell, Ruby: - Ruby McConnell is a registered geologist and outdoor adventurer who writes about nature, art, and culture with a particular emphasis on the intersection of the environment and human experience. A recipient of numerous honors, including the Literary Arts Oregon Literary Fellowship, she has written extensively about the Pacific Northwest and the environment in scientific and literary journals. McConnell is the author of two previous titles, A Girl's Guide to the Wild and A Woman's Guide to the Wild. She lives in Oregon with her husband, Paul.