Enos Mills
Book Review
Enos Mills: Citizen of Nature
By Dan Lepping
For Professor Owen Chariton
HIS 1110: Colorado History
CRN 54116
Enos Mills: Citizen of Nature
By Alexander Drummond
Alexander Drummond, born in 1938, is a professional writer and former director of publications for the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. Drummond, who grew up and attended the public schools of Boulder, was born Ronald Cox, but in 1989 he legally changed his name to Alexander Drummond taking his late grandfather’s name because he always felt Ron Cox never fit his persona. He has one older brother who is fifteen months his senior. He was an outdoor enthusiast, well known for his several hundred mile long ski tours, often by himself, and was also a long time climber and hiker. Drummond was the first person ever diagnosed with High Altitude Pulmonary Edema by Dr. Charles Houston. He currently resides in a cabin near Ward in the mountains west of Boulder and has lived there since 1982. Enos Mills: Citizen of Nature was published in 1995 by University Press of Colorado. The exact number is unknown but Drummond has stated that he spent many years working on the biography of Enos Mills.1 He utilizes a wide variety of primary sources including personal files from the Enos Mills Cabin Collection that are only available at the original homestead site, papers that were donated by the Mills family to the Denver Public Library in the 1960s, a majority of Mills’ books, and a few personal relationships with family members of Enos Mills (pp. xi-xiii).
Drummond wrote Enos Mills: Citizen of Nature to discover who Mills really was and how much of his revered John Muir was in him, how he acquired his beliefs and acted on them, and what his beliefs and actions mean to us today (p. xii). He states, however, “His story cannot be told through dispassionate scholarship alone. His life begs interpretation, and to that task I have inevitably brought some of my own
Enos Mills: Citizen of Nature
By Dan Lepping
For Professor Owen Chariton
HIS 1110: Colorado History
CRN 54116
Enos Mills: Citizen of Nature
By Alexander Drummond
Alexander Drummond, born in 1938, is a professional writer and former director of publications for the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. Drummond, who grew up and attended the public schools of Boulder, was born Ronald Cox, but in 1989 he legally changed his name to Alexander Drummond taking his late grandfather’s name because he always felt Ron Cox never fit his persona. He has one older brother who is fifteen months his senior. He was an outdoor enthusiast, well known for his several hundred mile long ski tours, often by himself, and was also a long time climber and hiker. Drummond was the first person ever diagnosed with High Altitude Pulmonary Edema by Dr. Charles Houston. He currently resides in a cabin near Ward in the mountains west of Boulder and has lived there since 1982. Enos Mills: Citizen of Nature was published in 1995 by University Press of Colorado. The exact number is unknown but Drummond has stated that he spent many years working on the biography of Enos Mills.1 He utilizes a wide variety of primary sources including personal files from the Enos Mills Cabin Collection that are only available at the original homestead site, papers that were donated by the Mills family to the Denver Public Library in the 1960s, a majority of Mills’ books, and a few personal relationships with family members of Enos Mills (pp. xi-xiii).
Drummond wrote Enos Mills: Citizen of Nature to discover who Mills really was and how much of his revered John Muir was in him, how he acquired his beliefs and acted on them, and what his beliefs and actions mean to us today (p. xii). He states, however, “His story cannot be told through dispassionate scholarship alone. His life begs interpretation, and to that task I have inevitably brought some of my own
References: 1Drummond, Alexander, 1938-, "Oral history interview with Alexander Drummond," in Heritage West, Item #53935, http://heritagewest.coalliance.org/items/show/53935 (accessed October 7, 2011) Enos Mills: Citizen of Nature. By Drummond, Alexander. Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1995. xi + 433 pp., photographs, notes, index