THE NEW SETTLER INTERVIEWS: BOOG

From Maine to Arizona and Oregon to the Carolinas, people have come home to the land. They've created original census tracks, new family traditions, and fresh forms of micro-business that combine entrepreneurial verve with a desire to restore to our connection with the Earth. These are the New Settlers.

Since 1985, Beth Robinson Bosk and photographer R.D. Deines have published the now-legendary counterculture newsprint magazine New Settler Interview, a bi-monthly collection of long, engrossing, freewheeling conversations with creative refugees and renegardes. Perched on the Pacific Rim, in a world of ancient forests and salmon streams, they are the intrepid pioneers of America's eco-frontier.

This first book-length collection of these mesmerizing dialogues--including an insightful early interview with the now-famous tree-sitter Julia Butterfly Hill--introduces readers to a rich collection of fascinating folks, provides a "keyhole" peek into the counterculture lifestyle, and captures the spirit of spontaneous adventure that characterizes America's back-to-the-land pioneers from coast to coast.

In the late 1960s, civil rights activist Beth Robinson Bosk fled the riot-torn streets of Cleveland, Ohio, in search of a peaceful place to raise her sons. Like many others of the time, she heeded the call of the land, choosing to settle at the edge of Mendocino, California, where she has lived since.

In 1985, Beth and partner R.D. Deines founded New Settler Interview, a bi-monthly compilation of long, engrossing dialogues with dedicated emigres from the American mainstream who, like herself, have found a place to call home on the Pacific Rim.

Bosk describes herself as an "advocacy journalist" who takes pride in discovering the next-famous. She was one of the first to interview the then-anonymous tree-sitter Julia Butterfly, at the beginning of her first winter in Luna.

Bosk is actively involved in the ongoing fight to save her region's ancient redwood forests from corporate timbering. As a pivotal ground coordinator of tree-sits--including the present one to protest unethical timbering by the Fisher family of Gap Inc.--Bosk is smack in the middle of "runaway history."