Boundary Waters: The Grace of the Wild (The World As Home) [Hardcover]

Paul Gruchow (Author)

Book Description

Series: The World As Home | Publication Date: August 6, 1997

In this profoundly moving hymn to the wild places of our land, reflected in the Boundary Waters of Minnesota and Ontario, the author of Grass Roots and The Necessity of Empty Places offers an ecstatic contemplation of nature and one's place in it.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Set astraddle the Minnesota-Ontario border, these four essays meander around the idea of wilderness. The paradox, as Gruchow often observes, is that the wildness of the region, a canoer's and hiker's paradise, is tamed by the access infrastructure of roads, trails, campsites, and harbors. Gruchow eventually concludes that wildness is as much a state of mind as of natural condition, and so emulates Thoreau's tenet of "wakefullness" to absorb and internalize his surroundings. One essay purposely reenacts Thoreauvianism: it meditates on a winter's week in a north woods cabin, spent listening, watching, and talking about the scenery and its significance. Come spring (a season imbues each essay), Gruchow embarks for Isle Royale, reputedly the most pristine national park, but one whose wildness is still tempered by the human presence. Quiet, contemplative, but alert to what nature reveals, Gruchow writes lucidly when sunlight slants off snow, mistily when morning fog rises off lakes, and exemplarily for perambulators who write after their hikes. Gilbert Taylor

From Kirkus Reviews

Meandering essays, some in journal form, on the author's experiences hiking, canoeing, and camping--alone and with friends and students--in the five-million-acre Minnesota-Ontario border ecosystem called the Boundary Waters. Gruchow describes the region, parts of which are federally protected, as a ``land of dense forests and thick bogs, of rocky ridges and deep, clear lakes.'' Though he is disdainful of those who can't ``connect,'' (e.g., who carry alarm clocks into the wilderness), Gruchow is no macho outdoorsman. He admits that he is powerless in the face of nature; that he doesn't entirely command his life; this he understands as a condition of ``maturity.'' In the wild, he says, we confront evidence of powers greater than our own; in this humility is the beginning of spirituality. Gruchow has a gift not only for aphorism but for description: The moose, for all its impressiveness, looks ``like the discarded early draft of an idea for an animal.'' Gruchow is a passive observer, there to discover, as he says in one essay, the reds in the fall trees. This gives the book a certain calm but also, in its weaker stretches, a flatness. The best section is a long essay in which the author describes reading Walden over a period of weeks one winter with three college students. When one of them proposed they try Thoreau's experiment, the group determined to spend a time at a wilderness base camp, Seagull Lake, were they read widely and wrote every day. Gruchow succeeds in making new many of the Waldenite's observations, though he realizes the limitations of Thoreau's experiment, assured that ``the perfectly Thoreauvian life,'' lived as it is away from society, would not be worth living. Should find an enthusiastic audience among naturalists with an interest in wild places, whether they've already explored the Boundary Waters or are simply content to accept Gruchow's version of it. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 212 pages
• Publisher: Milkweed Editions; 1st edition (August 6, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1571312110
• ISBN-13: 978-1571312112
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,700,557 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A mirror for the BWCWA, December 22, 1999

By 

leif fedje (Denver) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Boundary Waters: The Grace of the Wild (The World As Home) (Hardcover)

Whether you're an old voyager with a canoe paddle as worn as a river rock or someone who's just curious about the Boundary Waters of Minnesota, Gruchow's book will speak to you. The book is well-crafted, and each word must have been hand selected, but the stories still have the feel of a campfire yarn told softly over dying embers. Like the Boundary Waters, and nature itself, this book is at times profound, often educational, frequently beautiful, personally revealing, surprisingly hilarious, and always captivating. The Boundary Waters don't disappint, and neither does Gruchow.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful book about the advantages of a simple life, September 6, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Boundary Waters: The Grace of the Wild (The World As Home) (Hardcover)

Boundary Waters: The Grace of the Wild is a true to life essay of being in a great wilderness area. I have recently been in the Boundary Waters. My experiences along with Gruchow's seem to coincide. This book is a must for any traveler to the Boundary Waters. For those that have not, it's a great way to leave the "rat race" of everyday life and discover an enchanting wilderness. Boundary Waters: The Grace of the Wild will help you to stop and discover what your true priorities really are. Gruchow will help you reach your full potential in every thing you do and find your personal meaning of life. Or for just an hour at a time. I recommend this book to whom ever can read! You will enjoy it. I know I did!

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Boundary Waters: The Grace of the Wild, two books for the price of one (whether you like it or not), October 4, 2010

By 

MN2LA - See all my reviews

This review is from: Boundary Waters: The Grace of the Wild (The World As Home) (Paperback)

It's hard to give one rating to Boundary Waters: The Grace of the Wild (The World as Home). On the one hand, the vibrant descriptions of the unparalleled natural world of the book's namesake region are worthy of five stars, hands down. Were the majority of words between the covers devoted to the appreciation of the tactile world in which the author traversed, this book would rank with the best 'man in the wild' writings out there. But just when I'd start taking root in the author's passionately described woods and waters, an uninvited editorial diatribe would douse my tranquil embers.

It's not that I disagreed with Mr. Gruchow's societal observations - I actually agreed with him almost entirely throughout - I simply would have preferred factual accounts of his travels through the Boundary Waters - which I erroneously assumed referred entirely to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (a quarter of the book is spent on an island in Lake Superior) - instead of rambling opinions claiming wilderness essentially ceases to exist in today's world. I can't disagree with Mr. Cruchow's dominant claim, but I'm less interested in his social commentary and more interested in his experiences in the allegedly nonexistent wilderness.

The author cannot be faulted for writing the book he wanted to write, but potential readers should know up front that only a portion of the book will sweep one away to the boundary waters. That portion is great, but there are considerable digressions along the way.