I came late and reluctantly to Appalachian environmental history. That might sound odd since for thirty-six years I taught at Appalachian State University and still live in a town named for Daniel Boone. It was not that I lacked a personal connection to the landscape. Within a half hour of leaving my house, I could be hiking in the backcountry, camping at a remote site, or standing knee-deep in a mountain stream trying to interest a trout in one of my hand-tied flies. Moreover, I am directly related to Frankie Stewart Silver, one of southern Appalachia’s most notorious criminals. In the early 1830s, she brutally murdered her husband with an axe, dismembered his body, and burned the remains in a fireplace. Convicted of the crime in 1832, Frankie went to the gallows a year later, an unusual fate for a white woman in North Carolina. Nevertheless, I decided to leave the local landscape and the skeletons in my family closet to colleagues in Appalachian studies, a field where the research was, as Drew Swanson notes here, already “historical” and “environmental” enough to suit me.

中文翻译：

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来自Academe的Awol：一位自然作家的自白

我来晚了，很不情愿地了解了阿巴拉契亚的环境历史。这听起来很奇怪，因为我在阿巴拉契亚州立大学（University of Appalachian State University）任教了36年，至今仍住在以Daniel Boone命名的小镇中。并非我与景观之间没有个人联系。离开家半小时后，我可能会在偏远地区远足，在偏僻的地方露营或深深地站在山间溪流中，试图用一条绑在一起的苍蝇吸引一条鳟鱼。此外，我与南部阿巴拉契亚州最臭名昭著的罪犯之一弗兰基·斯图尔特·西尔弗（Frankie Stewart Silver）有直接关系。在1830年代初期，她用斧头残酷地谋杀了她的丈夫，肢解了他的遗体，并在壁炉中焚烧了遗体。弗兰基（Frankie）于1832年被判犯有这一罪行，一年后去绞刑架，这对北卡罗来纳州的白人妇女来说是不寻常的命运。尽管如此，