The Peru Gazette

Adirondack environmental philosopher Marianne Patinelli-Dubay will explore how the romantic vision of wilderness popularized by 19th Century urban elites and artists excluded other groups from the Adirondack story, on Sunday, July 22, at the Peru Free Library.

Painters of the Hudson River School and philosopher-authors led by Ralph Waldo Emerson created an idyllic wilderness ideal that excluded the real world struggles of groups like the African Americans who settled at Timbuctoo, at North Elba, says Patinelli-Dubay: “There is a romantic illusion that one type of wilderness experience is universal and our devotion to that ideal obscures alternative realities that deviate from Emerson’s pristine depiction.”

Her talk, “From Here to Timbuctoo: The Social and Racial Construction of Wilderness,” is sponsored by the North Country Underground Railroad Historical Association. The program is free and open to the public. It begins at 5 p.m. The Peru Free Library is at 3024 Main St., Peru.

For further information, call the North Country Underground Railroad Historical Association at 834-5180, or via the web at www.northcountryundergroundrailroad.com. Patinelli-Dubay is an environmental philosopher at the SUNY School of Environmental Science and Forestry, Northern Forest Institute, Newcomb.