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Rating: 
Summary: Wilderness adventure in the nature writing tradition
Review: On-Line Review by Leo Goldman, Natural Resources Defense Council.: In one way, this book is in the tradition of the author's admired nature writers -- such folk as Emerson, Thoreau, John Muir, and Aldo Leopold. But the framework is an autobiography, beginning with brief mention of his childhood in suburbs, which he describes almost as if they were crowded cities, and from which he began to escape at age 15 to backpacking and climbing. A college student during the Vietnam War, he later sought in wilderness "authenticity" and " a model for just and sustainable human societies" -- which he did not see in the world he and his friends had grown up in. He begins the detailed story with a difficult High Sierra climb -- between his military service (having volunteered for a program of Russian studies and intelligence work in order to avoid Vietnam itself) and graduate school. As he seeks for understanding of his motivations and feelings, he speaks first of challenge, thrill, danger, and athletic pleasure, but eventually realizes that he has become a naturalist, appreciating nature in all its complexity, not just the physical challenges and dramatic views. We follow his wilderness explorations, first in the mountains of the southwest during his first three years as a professor in Utah, then his disappointment in leaving the mountains for his next job, in Minnesota. There, however, he develops an appreciation of the wilderness of the flat country, mostly in canoe trips. Certainly an offbeat English professor, he had his students read nature writing, then accompany him on difficult treks to mountains and lakes, and return to write about their experiences. This approach was not appreciated by his colleagues, who apparently preferred traditional methods of teaching literature and writing. He ends this volume with the shock of being denied tenure -- but finds new awareness in the metaphor of a pine cone that releases its new life only in fire.
Rating: 
Summary: It's a Wonderful Life!
Review: Tallmadge uses the events of his own life to illustrate mankind's connection to the environment and the necessity of wilderness. Writing in the spirit of his admired predecessors, Thoreau, John Muir, Edward Abbey, and Aldo Leopold; Tallmadge attempts to find his own unique voice in the enlightenment of his experience. At times he may get a little too "intimate with the rock", but he leaves the reader an optimistic feeling of the joy of discovery and knowledge.
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