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Show Utah Arts Council SUSC prof essor wins original writing contest. CEDAK CITY-A Southern Utah State College professor has combined research and love of the Sierra to write the winning entry in the Utah Arts Council's 24th Annual Original Writing contest, non-fiction book division. Michael P. Cohen, chairman of the SUSC Department of English, was honored Friday in ceremonies at the Governor's Mansion in Salt Lake City for his "John Muir's Pathless Way: The Ecological Consciousness and Recreation of America." He received a $1,000 cash prize. Cohen's book isn't entirely scholarly, he said, but "an attempt to reinterpret Muir's views through my own 20th century perspective." Muir, a Scottish-born American naturalist, was one of the founder's of the Sierra Club and is credited with the establishment of Yosemite National Park and the adjacent King's Canyon National Park. Cohen's book has been accepted for publication by the Sierra Club and will be released in 1984 or 1985. "There are two aspects of the man Muir," the author said. "One is his Pacific. Stockton. Calif., and lived in Yosemite where his wife Valerie worked several summers as a park ranger. Cohen drew heavily upon his own experiences as a mountaineer while writing the book. He has climbed Mount McKinley, El Capitasn and other peaks in Afganistan, Canada and the U.S. Muir's life," he wrote, "like my own experience ex-perience in the Sierra, could be best appreciated as an unending media meditation on the meaning of life. No book could ever exhaust that meditation, just as no book will ever exhaust the mystery and wonder . of the mountains." The Utah Arts Council's Coun-cil's commentary on Cohen's book states that he writes with "...a style that blends scholarship with love-a relationship between the heart of the writer and the subject matter that raises it from an objective ob-jective investigation to an actual experience. We are invited to travel not only the path of a great man, Muir, and see the world as he saw it, but we also travel the path of a man whose world has been deeply affected by Muir and so our ap preciation of what it all means is intensified. ,In the works of the author, 'This book about Muir is also a book about my own thinking.'" The judge's critique continues: "Muir had 'articulated for America just how important it was lor men to live in and through a loving relationship to Nature.' The author's own vocabulary, feelings, experiences, illustrate that same discovery." Cohen joined the SUSC faculty in 1973 after receiving a PhD in English at the University of California, Irvine. In addition to his respon sibilities as department ij chairman, he is director H of the SUSC Humanities 11 Program, a I multidisciplinary project I sponsored by the H National Endowment for the Humanities which begins fall quarter at SUSC. Cohen and Jesse leave this week to spend the summer at Beaver Creek, Wyo., where Mrs. Cohen is working as a ranger in Grand Teton National Park. He will spend August 18-21 in Sun Valley, Idaho, a fellow at the Institute of the American West's "Inventing "In-venting the West." wanderings in the mountains, his personal insights and geological approach to the Sierra, his mysticism and his ecological outlook. The second is John Muir the public man, the popular conservationist, the man responsible for the national parks movement in the late 1890's and early 1900s." Cohen received a grant from the National Endowment En-dowment for the Humanities and completed com-pleted research for the manuscript while on leave of absence from SUSC in 1980-81. He did most of his research at the University of the Pictured is Southern Utah State College professor Michael Cohen and his young son Jesse. Cohen recently was awarded top honors in the Utah Arts council's 24th Annual Original Writing Contest. A concern for his son's future plays an important part in Cohen's book entitled "John Muir's Pathless Way : The Ecological Conciousness and Recreation of America." |