Record Details



Enlarge cover image for A Place in the rain forest : settling the Costa Rican frontier / by Darryl Cole-Christensen. Book

A Place in the rain forest : settling the Costa Rican frontier / by Darryl Cole-Christensen.

Summary:

In the 1950s, Darryl Cole-Christensen and his family were among the first settlers of the Coto Brus, an almost impenetrable, mountainous rain forest region of southeastern Costa Rica. In this evocative book, he captures the elemental struggles and rewards of settling a new frontier—an experience forever closed to most people in Western, urbanized society.
With the perspective of more than forty years' residence in the Coto Brus, Cole-Christensen ably describes both the settlers' dreams of bringing civilization and progress to the rain forest and the sweeping and irreversible changes they caused throughout the ecosystem as they cut the rain forest down. Writing neither to apologize for nor to defend their actions, he instead illuminates the personal and subjective factors that cause people to risk danger and hardship for the uncertain rewards of settling a frontier.
In his own words, Cole-Christensen says, "This is a book for the scientist who wants to recapture a sense of an incalculable world departed, for the student who asks: How is it that our forebears changed and restructured this land? For the adventurer who dreams of the expanse of frontiers, for every person who, having passed once through the darkening forest along a path in twilit stillness looks back to find that a blanket of murmurs remains."

Record details

  • ISBN: 0292711913
  • ISBN: 0292711905
  • ISBN: 9780292711907
  • ISBN: 0292711913
  • ISBN: 9780292711914
  • Physical Description: viii, 243 pages ; 23 cm
  • Edition: 1st ed.
  • Publisher: Austin : University of Texas Press, 1997.

Content descriptions

Formatted Contents Note:
1. Planning the Farm -- 2. The Elimination of Perfection -- 3. Isolation and the King's Highway -- 4. Subsistence and Monoculture -- 5. The Singletree and the Collar -- 6. The Nature of Our Adversity -- 7. The Grain of Gold -- 8. Children of the Settlers -- 9. By This We Stand -- Afterword: The Green Mantle.
Subject:
Land settlement > Costa Rica > Coto Brus (Canton) > History.
Frontier and pioneer life > Costa Rica > Coto Brus (Canton)
Frontier and pioneer life.
Land settlement.
Costa Rica > Coto Brus (Canton)
Genre:
History.

Available copies

  • 1 of 1 copy available at Northwest Indian College.

Holds

  • 0 current holds with 1 total copy.
Show Only Available Copies
Location Call Number / Copy Notes Barcode Shelving Location Status Due Date
Lummi Library HD 350 .C68 C65 1997 228033 Stacks Available -

Electronic resources