Ceremonial Time Ceremonial Time: Fifteen Thousand Years on One Square Mile Fifteen Thousand Years on One Square Mile

by John Hanson Mitchell

Book Overview

"Ceremonial time" occurs when past, present, and future can be perceived simultaneously. Experienced only rarely, usually during ritual dance, this escape from linear time is the vehicle for John Mitchell's extraordinary writing. In this, his most magical book, he traces the life of a single square mile in New England, from the last ice age through years of human history, including bear shamans, colonists, witches, local farmers, and encroaching industrial...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0201149370
• ISBN13: 9780201149371
• Release Date: March 1997
• Publisher: Catapult
• Length: 244 Pages
• Weight: 0.62 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 4.9" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Best sense of place

I admit I know the author. I met him while bragging about my - as unyet unpublished - book (it will be soon). He did not brag - but my wife had read Ceremonial Time and loved it. I bought it with some prejudice. Can't be that good... Yet it was. It is the BEST book about sense of place I have ever read. Including The Outermost House - yes, that good. Just buy it. aloha Sam Low

Seek any you will Find...............

Loved the book especially since I live in NH. We were walking down a commercial ally in Portsmouth, NH and I spied the book in a store window. I said to my husband, remember the name. We got home and ofcourse I forgot but remembered the Author's last name and something about C-Time. I pulled up Portsmouth on the computer found the address. Called and they were kind enough to send it to me Media Mail. Got it the next day!!! Within 15 pages I was hooked. The book was written in '85 and I dare to think that the whole area has been commercialized since. I travel I-495 occasionally and I wil be searching for Scratch Flat intently as he gave precise directions.

Important reading for any New Englander

I have lifted whole lecture topics from this book, and passed on copies to numerous students and friends. The idea is lovely -write an ecology based on an intimate history of one square mile of land-and Mitchell delivers it up in excellent prose that keeps one reading even when the material turns a tad dry. Why only 4 stars? I am not sure if this book will have "legs" beyond the landscape and history that it celebrates. It would be great to have a few more Mitchells do something similar to the westward and southward, so that we could expand our perceptions beyond the deliberate confines that the author has set. For those of us within a day's drive however, this is definitely a book to read.

wonderful

Like Thoreau, Mitchell has travelled widely by walking within a short distance of home. Many of us are able to walk, few are able to see as acutely or reflect as profoundly on what we have seen. This book is not merely a pleasure to read, it lingers in the mind long after the final page.

Magic

OK, here's how good this book is -- I bought it and read it, then lost it. So I bought it *again.* It's a lovely book about the ancestry of a piece of land. The writing compares well with Annie Dillard's. Yep, that good.