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Author John Hanson Mitchell's subject matter ranges from natural and human history, to travel, memoir, biography, and gardening. No matter what the subject, he has become best known for his incisive characterizations, his evocations of time and place, and his unique lyrical style.
Mitchell is the "discoverer", as he says, of a country within a country, a single square mile of land in eastern Massachusetts that was known as Scratch Flat in the nineteenth century. Starting with the now classic cult account Ceremonial Time (1984), Mitchell has written five books which use the same tract of land in one way or another to address the larger issue of what it means to be living on earth in our time.
This singular patch of land, with its deep historical shadows, its farms, and its resident wildlife has been used for twenty years as the metaphorical hunting grounds for Mitchell's explorations. Onto the anomalous, changing landscape of Scratch Flat, Mitchell has thrown virtually all his creative efforts to explore the themes which have obsessed him all his life - time, place, and the endurance of the natural world. He is, in the style of his hero and mentor, Henry Thoreau, a traveler in his own land; he never gets far beyond his square mile, and yet, according to the New York Time's Book Review, his work has provided a "comprehensive view of America, past, present - and future".
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John Hanson Mitchell is a unique, delightful, and absolutely essential voice.
- New York Times Book Review
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Newest Work:
Gleanings from a Wild Garden: Excerpts, Essays, and Works in Progress
Scratch Flat Press, 2026
In 1973, Mitchell was traveling in the Azores when he got an idea for a book. He thought to ascend Mount Pico, the highest point in Portugal, and record at each rest stop an account in the long history of the interrelationship between nature and human cultures.
He never did write that ambitous book, but he did spend the next fifty years writing books and essays on the same subject. Gleanings from a Wild Garden is a collection of some of those writings, including his wide ranging travels in his own back yard --- the square mile known as Scratch Flat, as well as travels in China, India, Europe, and Central America.
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