Seven Summers

Julia Corbett, a professor of communication at the University of Utah, writes both academic research and creative nonfiction about human relationships with the natural world. A former reporter, park ranger, naturalist, and press secretary, she authored one of the first texts in environmental communication, Communicating Nature: How We Create and Understand Environmental Messages. Her environmental nonfiction essays have been published in Orion, High Country News, and OnEarth magazines. She continues to summer at her cabin.

Acknowledgments Author's Note 1. Chainsaw Dreams 2. Picture in My Mind's Eye 3. Faith in the Witcher 4. If You Want to Make God Laugh 5. Blackwater Run 6. The Wild Within 7. Becoming a General 8. How Hard Can It Be? 9. The Dry Doe 10. Riding the New Wild West 11. What Happens at the Cabin 12. A Finger of Owls 13. "Are You an Environmentalist?" 14. A Crush on Cranes 15. Blooming 16. Home is Where Your Dead Are Buried 17. Going with the Grain 18. All is Forgiven at the Ceiling

"Corbett's intimate tale ... captures the essence of the 'new west,' a place still heavily influenced by history and nature but now open to 21st-century interpretation. By example, Corbett teaches us how to recognize where we belong in the world and how to achieve a sense of place. Her prose is well crafted and enjoyable to read, her observations are keen and interesting, and her willingness to share the surface and intimate details of her experience compels the reader to keep reading."-Susan A. Cohen, coeditor of Wildbranch: An Anthology of Nature, Environmental, and Place-based Writing (The University of Utah Press, 2010) "Engaging, straight-forward, nicely written. I appreciate the variety of embedded narratives and lightly-handled but intelligent ruminations on subjects that nevertheless stay closely tied to the core story."-SueEllen Campbell, author of The Face of the Earth: Natural Landscapes, Science, and Culture and Even Mountains Vanish: Searching for Solace in an Age of Extinction (The University of Utah Press, 2003) "A good literary memoir should raise evocative questions, and so this book did for me."-Terrain.org