Urban Wilderness Update: Join FMR to celebrate Milwaukee's Urban Wilderness!

July 6, 2008, 2-4pm: Urban Ecology Center, 1500 E. Park Pl. Milwaukee, WI

Get ready to experience the paradox of Urban Wilderness: Exploring a Metropolitan Watershed, a new book by Milwaukee photographer and FMR board member, Eddee Daniel. Join FMR for a preview party on July 6 at Urban Ecology Center, 1500 E. Park Pl., Milwaukee from 2-4pm.

Sponsored by FMR, Urban Wilderness intertwines photography and storytelling to promote an appreciation for clean water and natural environments in our community. The book celebrates an intriguing and unexpected reality: natural beauty in an urban setting. Documenting the conditions within the Milwaukee River watershed, it envisions the preservation and restoration of natural areas along the region's rivers and streams.

Eddee Daniel spent six years combing the "backwoods" of an urban landscape to discover what it means to live in a watershed. His photographs record what he found, whether natural or built up, beautiful- or polluted and ugly. In Urban Wilderness, he guides us down waterways, and reveals that preserving the natural and cultural history of the Menomonee, Milwaukee's industrial river, is key to sustainable city life.

With 148 full-color photographs, the book is published by the prestigious Center for American Places at Columbia College Chicago and distributed by the University of Chicago Press. Excerpts can be seen on eddeedaniel.com. It may be preordered from Friends of Milwaukee's Rivers by contacting Erin Hartman at 414-287-0207x 34. Profits from all books ordered through Friends of Milwaukee's Rivers will return to the organization.

The exhibit at the Urban Ecology Center will run from July through September. Public presentations and readings by the author will be announced in Riverkeeper News. Don't miss this voyage of discovery, not of faraway lands, but our own backyard, as Urban Wilderness illustrates that it is far more important to discover where we are than to seek out new places.

Download preorder form here [PDF]

Urban Wilderness Project

Can you imagine a city where the cosmopolitan wealth of culture can coincide with the serene beauty of nature? Can you imagine a metropolitan area which lives and grows in harmony with the scenic and ecological virtues of wild lands? Imagining and visualizing these things are among the goals of Urban Wilderness, a book and audio-visual project being sponsored by a partnership of seven local organizations.

Urban Wilderness is about the Menomonee River watershed in metropolitan Milwaukee. Typical of many urban rivers, the Menomonee has been both revered and abused. Through photography and narrative text Urban Wilderness documents current conditions and examines future potential of this natural resource. It is about exploration and discovery, not of exotic lands but of our own backyard, for it is more important to discover where we are than to seek out new places.

Urban Wilderness combines photographs with reflections about the importance of living in a watershed like the Menomonee River. It includes essays about the history of the region, the ecology of environmental corridors, and the progressive plans for redevelopment of
the Menomonee Valley industrial area.

The book, entitled Urban Wilderness: Exploring a Metropolitan Watershed, will be available in June 2008. It is being published by the Center for American Places at Columbia College Chicago. For more information about the project and to read excerpts from the book, visit www.eddeedaniel.com and go to the Urban Wilderness galleries, or contact Eddee Daniel, Project Director, at (414) 771-8857. To view the catalogue copy for the book or to order a copy, go to University of Chicago Press.