Reading & Signing: Numinosity

Join us for a reading and signing event with Robert T Perschel, author of Numinosity: A New England Forester's Search for the Ineffable, in conversation with Gary Wilhelm! About the book: There are moments in our lives where a door of awareness opens, if only for a brief second. These are the moments that are simply impossible to express, but moments that have captured us for all time. Join a New England forester on a fifty-year quest for something larger than all of us. Here are a series of essays, stories and poems emerging from the natural world, but always connected to a life that has had its common share of illumination and darkness, hope and despair, love and loss, ambition and failure, resistance and acceptance, anger and peace. Marking timber for harvest becomes a meditation on the unique connection between responsibility to the natural world and awareness of self and others. A shadow in the woods, a voice on the wind opens up the mystery inherent in all the wisdom traditions. The impact of a sudden death on a logging crew lingers for decades, demanding a resolution between hubris and fate. The crushing retreat of the United States from climate science and advocacy manifests in a longing for the precise language of another time when we were closer to the natural cycles of life. About the author: Robert's vision is a closer connection to the natural world and a region consisting of wild reserves surrounded by exceptionally managed forests that can produce the climate-friendly products needed in an era of changing climate. He has worked for the forest industry, as a consulting forester, and led The Wilderness Society’s Land Ethic and Network of Wildlands Programs. He chaired the 53-member Northern Forest Alliance and helped found the Forest Stewards Guild, a national organization of ecologically focused foresters. The Guild stands out as the only professional society to place an ethical responsibility to the land first and foremost in its code of ethics. More recently, as Executive Director of the New England Forestry Foundation, he led the creation of Exemplary Forestry standards, utilizing climate smart management techniques to offset 30 percent of the New England region’s carbon emissions. Currently, as a speaker and author, he is dedicated to promoting a bioeconomy that emphasizes the construction of tall buildings using engineered wood. His work focuses on replacing materials with high fossil fuel content, such as plastic, steel, and concrete, with sustainably sourced and climate-resilient forest products. Bob lives in an oak forest on the north shore of the island of Martha’s Vineyard. About the conversation partner: An Ithaca Native and 1970 Ithaca High School grad, Gary married Carol Dentes Wilhelm, IHS ’71, fifty-two years ago. They have three children—Hannah, Greta and Hugh—IHS grads of 2000, 2004 and 2007 IHS respectively. Gary met Bob Perschel at Yale where they were teammates on the football team and captains in successive years—Bob in 1972 and Gary in 1973. After Yale, Gary attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and earned a professional degree in Architecture. A Registered Architect, he retired from Cornell after over 35 years working first in Facilities Engineering designing renovations toCampus buildings, then as a Project Manager of Capital construction projects. The major projects Gary managed are centered on the Arts Quad and include the Addition to Lincoln Hall, the White Hall Renovation, thePhysical Sciences Building, Klarman Hall, Milstein Hall Construction, the Mui Ho Architecture Library Construction. Bob and Gary share interests in trees, sustainable design, and of course, Yale Football