Gary Paul Nabhan, who spent a year eating only foods produced in the desert Southwest within 250 miles of his home, discusses that experience at the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall at Bates College at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 23. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Nabhan’s appearance is the sixth annual Philip J. Otis Lecture at Bates, funded by the Otis Endowment, which helps support environmental programs at the college. The author will discuss his new book, “Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods” (W.W. Norton). Scheduled for publication this fall, the book describes Nabhan’s food adventure and his motives for undertaking it.

There’s culinary fascination in Nabhan’s tales of eating cactus buds, mesquite pods and Native American varieties of corn and squash, but the book’s overriding theme is much more serious. Behind the cornucopia of world foods that tempts every visitor to today’s supermarket, Nabhan believes, is an agribusiness industry that is proving a ruinous proposition for farmers, the environment and consumers themselves.

Director of the Center for Sustainable Environments at Northern Arizona University, Nabhan is expert in the political, economic and environmental issues involved in today’s agriculture. Modern industry practices, he says, entail tremendous fossil fuel consumption, the destruction of farmland and family farming, poor consumer nutrition and the loss of beneficial genetic traits in food crops and livestock.

An article about Nabhan in the May 2001 issue of Discover magazine lays out discouraging statistics about those impacts. For example, writes reporter Gretel H. Schueller, a typical piece of food travels 1,400 miles before it reaches the consumer. Nabhan, in response, aims to persuade readers to buy as much food as they can from local producers.

“Each time we put something in our mouths,” Nabhan told Schueller, “it’s a moral act, whether we admit it or not.” His message is a timely one in Maine, where the state Department of Agriculture is in the second year of a marketing campaign with the same goal, “Get real. Get Maine!”

Nabhan is the author of 12 books and the recipient of numerous awards for his work, including a MacArthur “genius” fellowship.

The Philip J. Otis Endowment was established in 1996 by Margaret V. B. and C. Angus Wurtele in memory of their son, Philip, Class of 1995, who died attempting to rescue an injured climber on Mt. Rainier. In recognition of Otis’ appreciation for the environment, the Otis Endowment helps support Bates programs in areas related to the environment, particularly the spiritual and moral dimensions of our relationship with the environment.

The Otis Lecture brings speakers of regional, national and international reputation to Bates.

Williams, who grew up near Great Salt Lake, Utah, calls herself part of a “clan of one-breasted women,” as 10 women of her family, including Williams, have been treated for or have died from breast cancer. The origin of her family’s misfortune – living downwind of atomic bomb testing grounds in the 1950s – thematically pervades her writing. In her memoir, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place (Vintage, 1992), Williams contrasts her mother’s battle with cancer with the Great Salt Lake’s rise to record heights, flooding the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge and decimating animal habitat.

Newsweek magazine said Williams is likely to make a “considerable impact on the political, economic and environmental issues facing the Western states this decade,” and the UTNE Reader recognized her as one of the 100 most influential environmentalists. She has received the National Wildlife Federation’s National Conservation Award for Special Achievement and recently was inducted into the Rachel Carson Institute’s Honor Roll.

Williams, who has served as naturalist-in-residence at the Utah Museum of Natural History, is the Shirley Sutton Thomas Visiting Professor of English at the University of Utah. She has received a Lannan Literary Fellowship in creative nonfiction along with a 1997 Guggenheim Fellowship. Her books also include Pieces of White Shell: A Journey to Navajoland, Coyote’s Canyon and Desert Quartet – An Erotic Landscape.

Established in 1996 by Margaret V.B. and C. Angus Wurtele, the Philip J. Otis Lectureship commemorates their son, Philip, a member of the Bates class of 1995, who died attempting to rescue an injured climber on Mount Rainier in 1995. Otis was deeply concerned about nurturing a sense of responsibility for the natural environment, and the annual lectureship focuses on environmental issues and the spiritual and moral dimensions of ecology. The endowment also sponsors opportunities for study, exploration and reflection by students, faculty and other members of the Bates community.

Annapurna: A Woman’s Place (Sierra Club Books, 1980), is Blum’s compelling and tragic account of the American Women’s Himalayan Expedition to Annapurna I, the tenth highest peak in the world (26,540 feet) and one of only 14 mountains in the world above 8,000 meters. Two American women fell to their deaths during the 1978 ascent of Annapurna I led by Blum and sponsored by the National Geographic Society.

Blum was deputy leader of the first all-woman ascent of Alaska’s Mount McKinley in 1970 and was a member of the 1976 American Bicentennial Expedition to Everest. She also co-led the Great Himalayan Traverse, a 2,000-mile, nine- month trek across Bhutan, Nepal and India.

A biochemist with a doctorate in physical chemistry, Blum has taught at Stanford University, Wellesley College and the University of California, Berkeley, where her research was instrumental in banning Tris, a cancer- causing chemical that was used as a flame retardant on children’s sleepwear.

Her many articles and photographs have appeared in National Geographic, Smithsonian and Science magazines, as well as the New York Times, Washington Post and San Francisco Chronicle.

In 1984 she received the Society of Women Geographers’ Gold Medal, an award previously given to eight other women, including Amelia Earhart, Margaret Mead and Mary Leakey.

Established in 1996 by Margaret V.B. and C. Angus Wurtele, the Philip J. Otis Lectureship commemorates their son, Philip, a member of the Bates class of 1995, who died attempting to rescue an injured climber on Mt. Rainier in Summer 1995. Otis was deeply concerned about nurturing a sense of responsibility for the natural environment, and the annual lectureship focuses on environmental issues and the spiritual and moral dimensions of ecology. The endowment also sponsors opportunities for study, exploration and reflection by students, faculty and other members of the Bates community.

Oelschlaeger, professor of philosophy and religion studies at the University of North Texas, wrote The Idea of Wilderness (Yale University Press 1994), which earned Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award nominations in 1991. His forthcoming books are Nature’s Odyssey: Essays on Environment and Wilderness and Ecological Semiotics.

Established by Margaret V.B. and C. Angus Wurtele, the Philip J. Otis Lectureship commemorates their son, Philip, a member of the Bates class of 1995, who died attempting to rescue an injured climber on Mt. Rainier in Summer 1995. Otis was deeply concerned about nurturing a sense of responsibility for the natural environment, and the annual lectureship will focus on environmental issues and the spiritual and moral dimensions of ecology.