Uprisings for the Earth: Reconnecting Culture with Nature delves into a new kinship with nature while acknowledging the treasures of urban life and the unique stake each person has in resolving critical and timely challenges. While avoiding doomsday scenarios, Lake offers a frank inquiry into a variety of causes leading to our current global peril while also providing a deep well of hope and profound insight.
Lake, a lifelong advocate for the environment and cultural transformation, weaves together history, ecology, culture, governance, women's leadership and the arts to map out an integrated approach to working in partnership with nature while creating a more just and sustainable future. Her wisdom, stories, lyrical style, and thorough research frame chapters such as “Around the Fire: From Global Warming to a Renewed Hearth”, “Anthem to Water”, “Democracy Ancient and Modern” and “Reshaping Interior and Exterior Landscapes”. Osprey takes us along wild rivers as she explores water conservation and the mysteries of water science; sits us around a fire along with great minds of past and present to contemplate the climate crisis; and takes us to several continents where we navigate deeper into history of culture and land.
Lake shows us that “a culture or civilization bereft of its connection to nature will not be sustainable. The decades since Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring have clearly shown us this. We will need to reconnect with the rhythms of the natural world in contemporary society to generate inner and outer resilience, and to move through the uncertain times ahead.”
Lake’s writing is informed by the American nature-writing tradition that arises from Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, John Muir, and Rachel Carson, as well as from cultural and natural historians Riane Eisler, Thomas Berry and Terry Tempest Williams.
Whether you are an agent for social, environmental or political change, newly awakened to environmental threats, or a lover of natural history and literature, consider this book required reading for its inspiration, innovation and hope for the Earth and future generations.
Praise for Uprisings for the Earth
“Uprisings for the Earth creates new, vibrant ground that holds within it keys to finding our way to a meaningful and vital relationship with the natural world in modern civilization. Osprey Orielle Lake’s unique, personal, and inspiring perspective on current and historical events makes us proud to be human as we search for self-responsibility and renewal while defying apathy and cynicism. Her book presents a philosophy that is both rich in nature poetics and filled with good sense. Within compelling and dynamic verse, Lake makes a call to discover and uphold what she has named an ‘Earth etiquette.’ This is a call we need to answer, and Lake makes us thrilled to do it.”
--Riane Eisler, author The Chalice and The Blade and The Real Wealth of Nations.
"If you are searching for your 'ground of being' in these turbulent times, this is the book to read. Osprey Orielle Lake shares with us how to listen to the natural world in our midst and offers some penetrating philosophical nuggets, while tantalizing us occasionally with her poetic flare. The result is a healthy dose of wisdom and a dynamic process for renewing our cultural narrative in a time of societal and environmental change. Uprisings for the Earth is the kind of ecological literacy we need today."
--Tony Clarke, co-author Blue Gold and author Tar Sands Showdown.
"Seeing both the peril and the promise of this moment in time, Osprey Orielle Lake brings us stories infused with her passion for life. Like winds off the mountains, they renew our energy and summon our will to rise up together for the sake of Earth."
--Joanna Macy, author World as Lover, World as Self.
“Uprisings for the Earth is a book for leaders and for those who feel the call to lead in this historic moment. The unity of Earth’s biological functioning has been broken, and thus all intelligent humans are united in a search for planetary healing. What you will experience in Uprisings for the Earth you will experience nowhere else.”
--Brian Swimme, California Institute of Integral Studies, co-author The Universe Story with Thomas Berry.
“Osprey is a talent in many ways, but I love most that she is a sculptor. Just as nature and the earth sculpt us, she applies her vision through her hands to sculpt figures from the earth. Rare is the writer who is a sculptor as well. Rare then is the written sculpture of Osprey Orielle Lake.”
--Tom Hayden, author The Port Huron Statement and The Long Sixties
“This book gives us a deep understanding of how the current course we are on has led to our dire planetary predicament and what we can do to change it. As an artist and advocate for the Earth, using personal experience and reflection, Lake offers a refreshing perspective on our capacity for intimacy with rivers, forests, mountains, valleys and each other in a time of environmental crisis. This thoughtful book presents a necessary and urgent call to action, cogent advice for all those who wish to be engaged in healing a culture disconnected from nature and in caring for our future.”
--Susan Griffin, author Wrestling with the Angel of Democracy and Woman and Nature
“In these times of great economic, political and environmental dislocation, Osprey Orielle Lake's Uprisings for the Earth challenges us to rise to the call of history and recommit ourselves individually and collectively, to creating a safe and sustainable future and that we do it with joy and laughter and love and awe and celebration!”
--Belvie Rooks, Growing a Global Heart
”This is one of the most important books I have read in recent years. Uprisings for the Earth is powerfully inspiring and provides an essential road map to transform our connection with nature and culture at a critical time in human history. The stories are personal and open both the heart and the mind. You will be better for having read this jewel of a book.”
--John Gray, author Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus
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