Outdoors in the Southwest
2:00pm - 3:30pm
Avon Public Library
Join the Eagle Valley Library District and Walking Mountains Science Center as they celebrate the 15th Anniversary of the High Country Speaker Series with a look back at how far we have come and the changes we have encountered as we prepare for the future in the high country.
Outdoors in the Southwest
Saturday, March 18, 2017 | 2:00pm
Presenter: Dr. Andrew Gulliford
Location: Avon Public Library
Discussion Highlights: Dr. Andrew Gulliford, professor of history and Environmental Studies at Fort Lewis College in Durango, will lecture on his book Outdoors in the Southwest: An Adventure Anthology. The book won the New Mexico-Arizona Book Award for nature/environment and the New Mexico-Arizona Book Award for Best Book on Arizona because of the many references to the Grand Canyon. Outdoors in the Southwest also won the Colorado Book Award for Best Anthology.
Gulliford will read and reflect on passages from the book with particular reference to “looking for history” and what can be learned from archaeological and historical sites on America’s public lands. He will also discuss “catch and release arrowhead hunting,” and “wilderness tithing” or giving back to public lands through volunteer projects. He encourages audiences to share their hiking and mountain climbing experiences. Three decades ago, he helped Eagle County pioneer Helen Dice write her memoirs of life on Brush Creek.
Speaker Biography: Dr. Andrew Gulliford is a professor of history and Environmental Studies at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. He teaches popular courses on wilderness, national parks, Western history, and environmental history. He is the author of America’s Country Schools, Sacred Objects and Sacred Places: Preserving Tribal Traditions, and Boomtown Blues: Colorado Oil Shale, which won the Colorado Book Award. He edited Preserving Western History, which was voted one of the best books on the Southwest by the Tucson-Pima County Library. His most recent book Outdoors in the Southwest: An Adventure Anthology won the 2014 Arizona/New Mexico Book Award in the category of nature/environment and Best Book on Arizona. Outdoors in the Southwest also won the Colorado Book Award for best anthology.
He writes columns about the west for the Durango Herald, Utah Adventure Journal, New Mexico WILD! and High Country News. Gulliford has had led tours across the West by canoe, raft, horseback, van, cruise ship, private train, and private jet for the Smithsonian Institution, National Geographic Society, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Rocky Mountain Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), Great Old Broads for Wilderness, History Colorado and the San Juan Mountains Association.
Dr. Gulliford has received the National Individual Volunteer Award from the U.S. Forest Service for wilderness education, and a certificate of recognition from the Secretary of Agriculture for “outstanding contributions to America’s natural and cultural resources.” For a decade he held a federal appointment to the Southwest Colorado Resources Advisory Council of the Bureau of Land Management. In 2016 he was one of two senior fellows awarded the Aldo and Estella Leopold Residency at Tres Piedras, New Mexico to research and write in the bungalow Aldo built for his wife in 1912 on the Carson National Forest.
The High Country Speaker Series is a partnership between the Eagle Valley Library District and Walking Mountains Science Center with the mission of encouraging environmental awareness, inspiring positive relationships with the natural world, and creating thought provoking dialogue in our community through FREE dynamic programming.