Zoro's Field: My Life in the Appalachian Woods [Paperback]

Thomas Rain Crowe (Author), Christopher Camuto (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2006

After a long absence from his native southern Appalachians, Thomas Rain Crowe returned to live alone deep in the North Carolina woods. This is Crowe’s chronicle of that time when, for four years, he survived by his own hand without electricity, plumbing, modern-day transportation, or regular income. It is a Walden for today, paced to nature’s rhythms and cycles and filled with a wisdom one gains only through the pursuit of a consciously simple, spiritual, environmentally responsible life.

Crowe made his home in a small cabin he had helped to build years before--at a restless age when he could not have imagined that the place would one day call him back. The cabin sat on what was once the farm of an old mountain man named Zoro Guice. As we absorb Crowe’s sharp observations on southern Appalachian natural history, we also come to know Zoro and the other singular folk who showed Crowe the mountain ways that would see him through those four years.

Crowe writes of many things: digging a root cellar, being a good listener, gathering wood, living in the moment, tending a mountain garden. He explores profound questions on wilderness, self-sufficiency, urban growth, and ecological overload. Yet we are never burdened by their weight but rather enriched by his thoughtfulness and delighted by his storytelling.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Once a "baby Beat" poet on the West Coast under the tutelage of Gary Snyder, North Carolina-born Crowe returned to the mountains after nearly two decades away. Influenced by Emerson and Thoreau, he hoped to live off the land, and did so in a little cabin with a vegetable patch. There Crowe learned to live mindfully with a little help from his neighbors, mountain sage Zoro Guice and psychologist Dr. Gelolo McHugh. Crowe writes of planting rhubarb, digging a root cellar, and living with turkey vultures and black snakes in this modern-day Walden. In 1982, after four years, McHugh died, and the family began talk of clear-cutting the mountain farm and orchard. Crowe reentered society with difficulty: "I had a hard time acclimating and adjusting to modern life. Still with my long hair and a very long beard, I scared people. And their reactions to my appearance scared me." Today, Zoro's fields are a gravel parking lot, and this bittersweet memoir is all that remains of the "bee-loud glade." Rebecca Maksel
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"I have known Thomas Crowe for thirty years or so, as poet, writer, editor, and community activist. Before he returned to North Carolina he was a neighbor in my part of California. I have always respected his work and dedication as someone who has truly found both his place and his work, and recommend him highly. His writing speaks from a fluency with landscape and an ease with language like water. At home in both."--Gary Snyder, author of The Practice of the Wild

“Crowe’s phrasing of the voices that resound throughout the hill country of western North Carolina echoes the mutually enhancing presence of humans and the Earth, which is the high experience to which we are called. He reminds me of T'ao Ch'ien, the fifth-century Chinese poet.”--Thomas Berry, author of The Dream of the Earth

"With this book Crowe adds his voice to the classic prayer of the True Warrior, 'Not for myself alone do I ask, but that all my relations may live.’"--Marilou Awiakta, author of Selu: Seeking the Corn Mother's Wisdom

“Crowe's reflections, while made under circumstances many of us shall never experience, are all the more valid for our lives in the high-tech world in which we live."--Southeastern Naturalist

"Crowe's writing arises from his close connection with the land, his poetry, and his devotion to uncovering the spirit of the place of his habitation. The result is that the work sings with the music of his own voice."--Joe Napora, author of Portable Shelter

"This book will appeal to anyone (and we are many) who has imagined unhinging from the cumbersome structures of 'progress' and consumerism in order to know the rhythms of quiet work and nature."--Alison Hawthorne Deming, author of The Edges of the Civilized World: A Journey in Nature and Culture

“Straightforward and heartfelt. . . . a hymn to the simple life and its virtues. Crowe does not expect everyone to unplug and head for the woods as he once did, but the lessons he learned contain valuable truths that we ignore at our peril. Like Thoreau, he is a chanticleer, hoping to wake us up."--John Sledge, Mobile Register

"For those of us who have a love affair with these southern mountains, this author speaks our language. . . . Crowe's sharp intellect, his world experience and a deep-in-the-pit-of-your-stomach love for the Appalachian landscape make this book pure treasure."--Roanoke Times

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: University of Georgia Press; New edition edition (September 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0820328626
• ISBN-13: 978-0820328621
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #987,094 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not so much a "Getting away from" as a "Going back to", October 2, 2005

By 

Corinne H. Smith (Athol, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Zoro's Field: My Life in the Appalachian Woods (Hardcover)

Written accounts of solitary wilderness living show up every once in a while, and seem to have become especially popular after the Baby Boomers "discovered" Thoreau in the 1960s. His words still inspire a few folks to chuck their lives of quiet desperation and head for the hills to get away from it all. Some are successful, some are not. Many stay there only a year or two before the most pressing need -- the financial one -- forces them to return to civilization.

That's not the case with Thomas Rain Crowe, who spent four years (1978-1982) living alone in a cabin in the Smoky Mountains of western North Carolina. Crowe went back to his home state after living in a variety of places, doing a variety of work, communing with a variety of people. When given the opportunity to be the cabin tenant, he made the most of it. He worked hard to be self-sufficient, growing his own food and tending to his home and his tools. Others might have been bored in such a setting, but not him. He was always busy: gardening, fishing, taking care of his beehives, making homebrew, digging his root cellar, taking notes on the experience. And he regained the use of one his most valuable resources, the Southern Mountain speech of his childhood. He was downright satisfied with the situation.

His mentors in this effort were several local men who offered advice from time to time: Zoro Guice appeared in Yoda-like fashion whenever Crowe needed to learn how to perform a certain task. Walt Johnson was the scamp of the neighborhood, but was also an accomplished dowser who could find water every time. From these and other natives Crowe learned how to live close to the land, to live in the time of the seasons. The reader senses that Crowe would be living there still, if civilization hadn't encroached upon the property and changed it forever. That's when he knew he had to leave.

Not just a doer, Crowe is also a viewer -- a writer, a poet, a spiritual man who feels a strong connection to the natural world. His poetry uses simple words and turns of phrase to evoke powerful images. On the other hand, his prose, the narrative of his story, is the work of a learned and literate man. Complex constructs entice the reader to keep on going, to chew on the concepts and experiences offered. It takes time to digest these lines, and it's time well spent. Having witnessed Thomas Rain Crowe read some of this book aloud in person, I have the benefit of having heard the hint of the Smokies in his voice, the love for the place evident in every well-spoken syllable. No matter; it comes through in the typewritten text as well.

So was Thomas Wolfe right or wrong? Can you or can't you go home again? The reader decides. In the meantime, "Zoro's Field" should be placed on a shelf with the works of the old and new naturalists (Thoreau, Burroughs, Leopold, Carson, Eiseley, Bass) to one side, and the "Foxfire" books to the other. A thought-provoking addition to the environmental canon.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Native, May 25, 2005

By 

J. Privette (Fairview, NC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Zoro's Field: My Life in the Appalachian Woods (Hardcover)

More than a modern Walden, this is a book about intentional living. Crowe returns to home land in the southern mountains of North Carolina after living in Europe and northern California. Guided by principles of the Beat poets and philosophers, he embraces the traditions of sustenance, growing his own food, tending bees (honey for trade), making wine and beer. From his cabin beside the Green River gorge, he explores both terrain and history in celebration of a way of life that has been largely lost. The book is elegant and poetic. Crowe writes with an easy style, but critical intellect.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars living with nature in Appalachian region, May 29, 2005

By 

Henry Berry "Henry Berry" (Southport, CT) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Zoro's Field: My Life in the Appalachian Woods (Hardcover)

The local legend and mountain sage of the Appalachians of western North Carolina Zoro Guice told the author, "If a man goes out in the woods and just sits down in one place for long enough, all of nature and everything he needs to know will eventually pass before him like a parade." And so Crowe--poet, publisher, and recording artist--took up residence in the Appalachians for four years, and writes about the "parade." As in Thoreau's "Walden," Crowe writes about how he subsisted in the wild and what he learned from this. But moving somewhat beyond "Walden" in content and form, Crowe writes more about what goes on beyond himself; and some passages are in the form of verse. Not so meticulous or contained as "Walden," "Zoro's Field" reflects on modernity's effects on the tie with nature, environmental concerns, and changes which have come to the area. Though different in ways from Thoreau's classic which it cannot help but be compared with, Crowe's work in this same genre holds its own as an engaging, thought-inducing memoir.