Customer Reviews

Wake-Robin

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"According to biographers at the American Memory project at the Library of Congress, John Burroughs was the most important practitioner after Thoreau of that especially American literary genre, the nature essay. By the turn of the century he had become a virtual cultural institution in his own right: the Grand Old Man of Nature at a time when the American romance with the idea of nature, and the American conservation movement, had come fully into their own." (Wikipedia)

Wake Robin is the first of Burroughs' published essays. The title is taken from the common name of the white trillium, which blooms just as migratory birds (including robins) show up in the northern states in the Spring. Burroughs is an ardent reporter of the natural world, and of songbirds in particular. His writing, however, is not that of the well-informed naturalist. Wake Robin reads more like a diary of his wanderings and his casual observations in the woods. Burroughs' reputation as a co-founder of the conservation movement is likely due more to the timing of his publications than on their content. In the modern era we look for more than the musings of an unstudied amateur when we wish to become better informed about the natural world.

Clearly adapted from entries in his personal diary, Burroughs' writing is frequently self-conscious, detracting from his message. He labors at his craft, but when it works, it is very good. Speaking of the wood or bush sparrow, he says, "It was a perfect piece of wood music, and was, of course, all the more noticeable for being projected upon such a broad unoccupied page of silence." Burroughs wrote just after the Civil War and he frequently references and credits Henry Thoreau, who wrote just before the Civil War. It is difficult not to compare the writings and observations of the two. In fact, Burroughs' writing suffers in the comparison.

The early conservation movement needed a few articulate reporters, and Burroughs was ahead of his time in writing of his woodland meanderings. No one will be drawn to Burroughs for his craft at writing, but we should credit him with his inspiration, and appreciate Wake Robin for what it is, "an invitation to the study of ornithology."