Peak experiences

by Marshall, Ian

"Nature's ability to satisfy deep human needs is familiar to anyone who has hiked up a mountain, canoed a river, or hung a bird feeder outside the kitchen window. In Story Line, his groundbreaking piece of narrative ecocriticism, Ian Marshall explores how natural surroundings inspired works of literature set along the Appalachian Trail. In Peak Experiences, Marshall sets out on a far more personal and far-reaching journey: to discover how our modern estrangement from the natural world has affected our mental well-being.". "Taking as his starting point the psychologist Abraham Maslow's "hierarchy of human needs" - a pyramid familiar to anyone who ever cracked a textbook for Psych 101 - Marshall asks how his own experience of deep satisfaction in nature may or may not fit Maslow's theory. In chapters focused on the needs identified by Maslow, Marshall finds evidence for the healing power of nature in literature and in his own experiences in the wild."--BOOK JACKET.