A beautifully written, unsentimental account that challenges our Thoreauvian romance with nature and offers the conclusion that in civilization is the preservation of the wildness that we cherish. . In 1974 Wallace Kaufman, following the romantic vision of a simpler life in harmony with nature he first glimpsed in Thoreau's Walden , moved on to his own land by a small stream in the North Carolina woods. Now, twenty-five years later, he emerges to tell a tale somewhat different from Thoreau's-an entertaining, moving, and distinctly late-twentieth-century story of a life lived in the wild as landowner, environmentally conscious developer, builder, farmer, conservationist, wilderness steward.
His love of nature and his commitment to preserving it never waver, even as he tells the sometimes hilarious, sometimes catastrophic story of the ragtag cast of 1970s "back-to-the-land" characters who buy shares of his land in the wake of the first Earth Day; of trying to build a road without cutting down trees or disturbing a streambed, but at last giving in and learning to chainsaw and dynamite; of building his own home; of resorting to violence when flying squirrels refuse the special niches he builds into his walls and insist on taking up residence in his ceiling; of preserving his old-growth forest; of the awesome devastation of hurricanes.
- ISBN10 0738202584
- ISBN13 9780738202587
- Publish Date 31 May 2000
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 18 December 2001
- Publish Country US
- Publisher INGRAM PUBLISHER SERVICES US
- Imprint Da Capo Press Inc
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 352
- Language English