Coming Out Of The Woods: The Solitary Life Of A Maverick Naturalist [Hardcover]

Wallace Kaufman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 30, 2000

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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In the late 1960s, swept up in the spirit of the times, young literary scholar Wallace Kaufman banded with friends to purchase 330 acres of North Carolina forest and found their version of utopia--a low-impact, covenant-heavy development that their rural neighbors would come to call "Hippie Town." Kaufman's utopia fell apart, as such places tend to do, under the usual pressures, but he stayed in the woods, eventually losing his academic job but finding plenty of other work to do as a sometime builder and land appraiser. His tales of how to go about making a home in the backcountry may give would-be back-to-the-landers pause, but they're certainly instructive and full of useful details. (Who knew that "the average small house requires over 50,000 nails," or that a builder hammering by hand would need to devote nearly two weeks to driving those nails in?) Kaufman is a keen observer of the ways of nature, discussing the natural history of trees, the habits of flying squirrels and copperheads, and the relentless cycle of life and death. An evident conservationist, he also finds room for extractive activities such as logging, mining, and hunting, and he argues for individual ownership of the land, maintaining that "the world's greatest environmental tragedies are largely on public lands or lands to which no one has a secure title or protection for a claim."

At times Kaufman falls into cantankerousness, grumbling at urban environmentalists who, he holds, unduly romanticize life in the wilds--"No one," he writes, "lives happily ever after alone in a wild place"--and taking potshots at the likes of Henry David Thoreau, who lived in his famed woodland cabin for only a fraction of the time that Kaufman lived in his. These ill-tempered lapses, which read like afterthoughts meant to attract controversy, don't detract too badly from the rest of Kaufman's generally easygoing memoir, which, all in all, is a worthy addition to the library devoted to country life. --Gregory McNamee

From Publishers Weekly

A pioneer of the back-to-the-land movement, Kaufman established Saralyn, an ecologically minded community, on 330 acres of North Carolina woodlands in 1968. Some 35 familiesAowner-builders who created their own homesAattempted to live the simple life in what locals dubbed "Hippie Town." The colony's diverse residents have included "three Irish bricklaying brothers," a Zen monk, a saxophone-playing dentist, a Quaker stone mason and a retired lieutenant-colonel who built a Japanese solar house. In this gracefully written, leisurely memoir, Kaufman wages a running argument with his former guiding light, Thoreau. Whereas Thoreau, convinced that wilderness could save civilization, advocated voluntary simplicity and voluntary poverty, KaufmanAby dint of hard experience pursuing a frugal, back-to-nature lifestyleAcomes to the opposite conclusion: that managing land and natural resources is built into human behavior. Embracing technology as necessity, he notes that "to live as [Thoreau] did is to live in malnutrition, in violation of the law, and in generally substandard conditions." In 1974, Kaufman designed and built his own house in a forest half a mile from Saralyn. Among his welcome if uninvited house guests are fearless Carolina wrens, flying squirrels living in the attic, snakes and bees in an observation-box in the living-room wall. A vegetarian and organic gardener, Kaufman doesn't condemn hunting, and his critique of what he sees as the romantic fallacies of environmentalists and back-to-the-land enthusiasts undergirds this iconoclastic meditation on our place in nature and on the kinship between humankind and animals. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press; First edition (May 30, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0738202584
• ISBN-13: 978-0738202587
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 6.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,659,780 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beyond Thoreau, June 5, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Coming Out Of The Woods: The Solitary Life Of A Maverick Naturalist (Hardcover)

I have to admit that I approached this book with some hesitation. I did not want to read yet another polemic on the good, the bad, and the ugly in environmental politics. And much to my relief and pleasure, this book does not go in that direction. Instead, it is a compelling narrative of one man's effort to reach an accord with the dynamic and changing forest in which he has been living for over thirty years. In the process, Kaufman tests his and his friends idealized and often romanticized notions of Nature against the realities of road building, flying squirrels, and devastating hurricanes. Kaufman uses Thoreau as his touchstone, but takes the latter's two-year experiment and expands it into a life's study. As he digs the foundation of his house, he discovers the pre-history of the Morgan Branch forest; and as his lives in his completed house, he begins to understand the often harsh ecology of the place. His great past time is hunting for edible mushrooms, often in the company of his daughter. These hunts provide a paradigm for the entire book in which the ability to discern fine details makes for enjoyable eating or, in this case, reading.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars 20 x Thoreau = Surprises, September 6, 2000

By 

Tom Dobrez (homewood, il United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Coming Out Of The Woods: The Solitary Life Of A Maverick Naturalist (Hardcover)

Kaufman spends twenty years doing what all of us nature lovers think we could do-Live alone in the woods for a lifetime. Well Kaufman isn't always alone and 20 years may not be a lifetime but it is a signifcant commitment to "the simple Life." And the revelations Kaufman comes back with are not exactly what one might expect. Like modern advancements and capitalism is good for nature? Not totally, but similar to Bill Bryson's observations in his big hit A Walk in the Woods, the reality of modern enviromentalist's ideals is not always what it is cracked up to be. And I think 240 months(20 times longer than Thoreau) in the woods qualifies Kaufman as much as any body to say so. Though he lacks Bryson's swift narrative and comical anecdotes, what we gain from Kaufman is an update from Walden Pond that we might be surprised to read. The book will also help quell any idyllic thoughts you might have about dropping out of society to pursue a life in the woods. Because after finishing this book you may find that Kaufman's experience was enough.

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars COMPLEXITY AND BEAUTY, November 23, 2000

By 

Wallace Kaufman - See all my reviews

This review is from: Coming Out Of The Woods: The Solitary Life Of A Maverick Naturalist (Hardcover)

Here is a writer who conveys the complexity and beauty of nature without putting on rose colored glasses. Coming Out of the Woods inspires, entertains, informs and tells a page-turner story that reveals how all human interaction with nature demands tradeoffs. Think of it as an update of Thoreau's Walden, but with a strong story line and conclusions appropriate for our time. I recommend it highly for introductory environmental studies courses, American literature courses, or courses on literature and the environment.

Orrin Pilkey James B. Duke Professor of Geology Emeritus Duke University