Hi everyone, this is Mike Ziser (rhymes with “riser”). I teach English at UC Davis, with a special focus on the different ways that people’s experiences with the natural world come through in their writing and art. Of course I love all the traditional nature writers and artists—Henry Thoreau and John Muir and Ansel Adams, for example—but I’m particularly interested in the kinds of things that happen when people are not just passively enjoying nature but rather are working in it and with it (and often against it). In my professional work I try to think about the way that the environment comes through in farmers’ almanacs, recipe books, logging camp songs, and the everyday musings of everyday folks as they walk through their everyday fields and woods. Unfortunately and ironically, there aren’t too many literary records of these kinds of “everyday” environmental experiences, and I am hoping that my meetings with you will give me some small taste of the way your specific home-place comes through in your artistic expressions.
I was born in Texas while my dad was in the Navy, and then I lived in Oakland and Sacramento for during my school years. I’m married and have two kids (Anna, almost 6, and Eli, almost 4), two dogs, three chickens, 2 goldfish, and about 40,000 honeybees. Besides taking care of all of these beasts, I spend my free time repairing old bicycles and exploring my own Putah-Cache bioregion by foot, bicycle, and kayak. I’m really looking forward to meeting you and seeing what is going on up in your neck of the woods. 
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Meet Mike Ziser!
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1 comments:
Ryan
Pleased to meet you. I am a second generation person to this area. Born and raised as a West Pointer. When my parents moved here after wwII my dad first worked in a saw mill then as a faller in the woods. My mom was a UCLA grad and soon went o work for the school district as a teacher. I have also worked many years in the lumber industry. Even with this background I am not an advocate of unbridle resource extraction. I guess I've seen too much un touched timber and have felt the magic of virgin forest. Many people here have places they feel need to be set aside. I suppose there is a story for every one of those places. For the last year or so I have been working to set aside a magic place along a creek. Hunter Creek is a small sliver of virgin forest, an isolated ecosystem of it's own. Old growth fir, sugar pine, cedar, and ponderosa pine abound along with yew, giant trillium, shooting stars, bleeding hearts and many other plants I can't name. I remember first going to this place with my dad to go fishing. I was probably 10 years old. I guess catching a brook trout on the first try could tend to imprint a place on the mind. It has obviously become much more to me than just a place to catch fish.
I'm not sure what kind of stories your looking for but there are many of them. Bruce's Crossing is another good one.
Alan
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