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Summary: I couldn't have said it better
Review: I am not a philosopher, in fact I had never even read Thoreau before. I can't even tell you if I spelled his name correctly, but I can tell you that I felt as though he was there last spring, picking black raspberries beside me. His ability to give the simple things in life a rich meaning was awesome. Many times in the blueberry section I would stop reading and tell my wife one of Thoreau's thoughts. He is right that the poor boy picking berries is indeed richer than the rich boy who eats imported nuts. Once again, the journey and not the destination is the important thing. I started picking wild blackberries 6 years ago when my children were 2 and 3. They would gingerly pick the berries in an attempt to avoid the thorns. One of my fondest memories in life is of passing the bowl to the kids to hold while I picked, only to turn around seconds later and find the berries gone and the kids laughing wildly with blue stained lips. That's rich. I have been to Africa, Alaska etc. , but wild fruits is where I was born and wild friuts is where I want to die. For you city dwellers, keep an open mind and let him tell his story. I intend to get a jar of jam (wild black raspberry of course) to Mr.Dean and Ms. Rorer this summer.
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Summary: Thoreau gets down to it!
Review: I finally tried to read On Walden Pond a few Summers ago and I just couldn't force my way through it. I got sick of the way the author kept slamming farmers while suggesting a life of berry picking in the woods as the real way to go. Even the editor that put "Wild Fruits" together says "...in the popular mind..a querulous hermit... ." But then, "Recently the popular mind has had to expand itself to include...a third of his life: the one spent closely observing and eloquently reporting on natural phenomena-Thoreau the protoecologist."It's enough to be a Prophet but really you need to write that Testament too, "Wild Fruit" is Thoreau's and it is wonderful. More poetic than Walden and less insular this book contains great wisdom and it's fun to read. I'm only 1/3rd through the book but even the 22 page essay on Black Huckleberry alone is justification for reading the whole book. Emerson said at Thoreau's funeral that "The country knows not yet, or in the least part, how great a son it has lost." I didn't until I started reading "Wild Fruits" and now it's very obvious he's one of the most important Americans to have ever lived.
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Summary: Last sweet words from our friend Henry
Review: I received Wild Fruits from my parents for Christmas, read it last spring, and finally have gotten around to writing a small, informal review. First of all, I'd like to thank Dr. Dean for bringing this last Thoreau manuscript to light-- he has done a great service to Thoreau enthusiasts, lovers of literature and nature, and posterity with this work (I'd tell him personally but I seem to have misplaced his e-mail address). There isn't a great deal I feel need to add, as previous reviewers have done a good job already. Over the past year, Thoreau's words on these wild fruits have been steeped in my consciousness. Henry's loving, beautiful depictions of these various gifts of nature were with me as I worked this summer at a garden center, realizing that Henry's "shad bush" and our "serviceberry" were one and the same. After reading this book, I was much more aware of the fruits of my own native Michigan fields and woods-- blackberries, rose hips, elderberries, wild grapes, and viburnums were all there this summer, more numerous and beautiful than ever before. I found myself collecting and tasting plants I never would have thought to try before, Henry's words openened a whole new world to me. Then, in August, I made a pilgrimage to Massachusetts, looking for and tasting the fruits of New England, even the fabled huckleberries, on Cape Cod National Seashore and in the Walden Woods, as I sauntered along the railroad tracks into Concord from the pond. Even this fall, when I came back to my university in Colorado, I discovered and gathered the fruits of the prickly pear cactus, and have saved the seeds, hoping to possibly propagate them. Read these last sweet words from our friend Henry-- let him teach you to love the simple natural joy that can be found nestled among the shrub-oaks and pitch pines: our free, wild American fruits.
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Summary: Thoreau's Wild Fruits
Review: Legendary nineteenth-century environmentalist, philosopher, and writer Henry David Thoreau has had a profound effect on American literature and ecology. His honest and poetic, down-to-earth writing style has inspired millions, influencing how we think about the natural resources around us. Wild Fruits, the recently published rediscovered text, is a collection of final notes from three years of writing and research (Thoreau died in 1862 just before completing the book). The pages were in storage at the Berg Collection in the New York Public Library until Thoreau specialist, Bradley P. Dean chanced upon them, and began decoding Thoreau's notoriously difficult handwriting. The actual text of Thoreau's Wild Fruits takes up only a fraction of the book-239 of its 409 pages. Dean then includes a chronology of Thoreau's life, other notes Thoreau took during the writing of Wild Fruits, a glossary of botanical terms, and notes on the original manuscript. The elegantly composed chapters catalog the berries and fruits of New England, with beautiful pen and ink illustrations and botanicals. Thoreau's observations leave nothing untouched. His talent for finding beauty in the smallest things is well represented in his descriptions of the flowering of black spruce, the arrivals of thimble berry, and fall bayberry-to name just a few. Thoreau's ability to find the sacred in commonplace is replete throughout Wild Fruits. A favorite passage celebrates seasonal flora and fauna: "Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit...be blown by all the winds. Open all your pores and bathe in all the tides of Nature, in all her streams and oceans, at all seasons." In a time when we spend more and more hours in front of computer screens and on commutes rather then resting beneath birches or walking along river banks, Thoreau provides the inspiration to rediscover nature, and lose oneself in forest, prairie, and mountains. His words to fellow townspeople a century ago are still appropriate to today's populous: "It is my own way of living that I complain of as well as yours, and therefore I trust my remarks will come home to you...we have behaved like oxen in a flower garden. The true fruit of Nature can only be plucked with a fluttering heart and a delicate hand, not bribed by any earthly reward." -Heather K. Scott
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Summary: It's really about fruit!!
Review: This may sound silly, but I was surprised to find out that this book is actually about WILD FRUITS. I mean everything you ever wanted to know about every kind of fruit the New England landscape has to offer: when it blooms, where it can be found, texture, color, everything. If you're looking for another Walden or a deeper understanding of the Transcendentalist movement, start elsewhere and come back to this one. As always with Thoreau this book is marvellously written, and the philosophy is there. It's just scattered and half-hidden throughout the landscape like wild strawberries (and just as delicious). It's a great read, just be warned: it's first and foremost about fruit!
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