Walking Towards Walden: A Pilgrimage in Search of Place

Rating:
Summary: A thoroughly irritating book
Review: Let me start by saying that I am a big fan of Mitchell, and I really enjoyed CERMONIAL TIME. This lead me to look forward to the arrival of WALKING... and at one level I was not disappointed. AS in all his work Mitchell is adept at weaving together diverse strands of history, culture, and place and to get us thinking about the landscape in new ways. His taste in friends (or at least his way of introducing us to his friends) however seems somewhat flawed. While his other books are more solitary ruminations on ideas and areas, in WALKING he brings along two annoying Yuppies, who would serve as comic relief if any was needed. One is an incredibly PC Indian Wannabe, the other is the sort of Birder that gets some of us reaching for the shotgun, between them they serve only to distract the reader from what would otherwise be a pleasant cross-country ramble through a landscape made all the more interesting by Mitchell's knowledge of both recent history and geological "deep time". Overall Mitchell is at his best when he talks about the dead or the non-human, he can be downright cruel in his descriptions of the living people that he encounters as he approaches Concord. For all that I can sympathize with Mitchell's obvious concern for the rampant development that he must deal with I am not sure that this sort of meaness towards folks who may well be Fellow Travellers (in several senses of the word) does the story much good. In spite of my criticism this is probably a stroll worth taking though you may want to stuff two of your companions into a cedar swamp!

Rating:
Summary: sunny and surly sauntering
Review: Of all Mitchell's works, all uniformly very good and engaging, this one has always had a personal resonance for me. In the spirit of Thoreau himself (Himself?), Mitchell and chums saunter along on their pilgrimage to make sense of place, filled with far-ranging thoughts and comments about their neighbours and civilization in general. Walden Pond continues to draw us in, both for it beauty and historical importance to environmental thought. This book also draws us in as participants on that internal and external journey. For these reasons, the publisher Green Frigate Books recently solicited a front-end blurb from Mitchell for my recently published "Profitably Soaked: Thoreau's Engagment with Water."

Rating:
Summary: Mitchell's Multi-layered Cultural History
Review: These 300 pages describe both a physical journey, lasting but a day, overlaid with historical, architectural, artistic, anthropological, and literary musings of a richly cultivated mind. He writes, for example, upon viewing a stark landscape, "...I made the connection...This hollow...looks very much like the fourteenth-century Tuscan forest as envisioned by nineteenth-century French illustrator Gustave Dore."

Making connections is Mitchell's forte. The narrative of a tramp through woods and sloughs brings to Mitchell's fertile imagination scenes enacted in the places they pass. He seamlessly inter-weaves the fascinating story of King Philip's War, described as "one of the first anti-imperialist efforts ... the first American revolution" alongside the war between the colonists and British regulars, "essentially a civil war."

Rather than re-hash Thoreau's meditations in "Walden," Mitchell shares his own stream-of-consciousness, touching on "The Epic of Gilgamesh" and "The Wizard of Oz," "The Inferno" and some of Melville's "chief harpooners." Additionally, he offers an in-depth account of the way that nineteenth-century landscape painters changed the view of society toward their environment, suggesting that "It is doubtful that the preservation of a wilderness park would even have been considered if the painters hadn't been there first." Indeed, his descriptions are painterly, but he also succeeds in carefully bringing his companions and those they meet on the way to believable life.

The book is divided into 18 chapters, fifteen of them given names of places traversed in each of the miles walked. These names, such as "Nonset Brook" and "Nagog" are less likely to register with the reader than the connections these places evoke in the mind of the author. Who can recall, for instance, that the etymology of "Key West" is to be found in "Mile 10: Thoreau Country?" Hopefully, an index in a later edition will make it easier for the reader to re-discover favorite passages.

Rating:
Summary: Mitchell's Multi-layered Cultural History
Review: These 300 pages describe both a physical journey, lasting but a day, overlaid with historical, architectural, artistic, anthropological, and literary musings of a richly cultivated mind. He writes, for example, upon viewing a stark landscape, "...I made the connection...This hollow...looks very much like the fourteenth-century Tuscan forest as envisioned by nineteenth-century French illustrator Gustave Dore."

Making connections is Mitchell's forte. The narrative of a tramp through woods and sloughs brings to Mitchell's fertile imagination scenes enacted in the places they pass. He seamlessly inter-weaves the fascinating story of King Philip's War, described as "one of the first anti-imperialist efforts ... the first American revolution" alongside the war between the colonists and British regulars, "essentially a civil war."

Rather than re-hash Thoreau's meditations in "Walden," Mitchell shares his own stream-of-consciousness, touching on "The Epic of Gilgamesh" and "The Wizard of Oz," "The Inferno" and some of Melville's "chief harpooners." Additionally, he offers an in-depth account of the way that nineteenth-century landscape painters changed the view of society toward their environment, suggesting that "It is doubtful that the preservation of a wilderness park would even have been considered if the painters hadn't been there first." Indeed, his descriptions are painterly, but he also succeeds in carefully bringing his companions and those they meet on the way to believable life.

The book is divided into 18 chapters, fifteen of them given names of places traversed in each of the miles walked. These names, such as "Nonset Brook" and "Nagog" are less likely to register with the reader than the connections these places evoke in the mind of the author. Who can recall, for instance, that the etymology of "Key West" is to be found in "Mile 10: Thoreau Country?" Hopefully, an index in a later edition will make it easier for the reader to re-discover favorite passages.

Rating:
Summary: Walking towards Walden
Review: This book operates on at least two and perhaps three levels. The first level is simple: Mr. Mitchell and two friends are walking from Westford to Concord, MA cross-country, trying to avoid roads. His two friends enjoy the out of doors in their own ways and Mr. Mitchell does a lot of daydreaming about the meaning of place in colonial New England and elsewhere.

The second level includes a lot of snotty social commentary at the expense of various parties ostensibly less enlightened than our three sojourners. Barkley is a cynical intellectual who figures that Western civilization is going to hell in a handbasket and he would just like to make it clear that a) it is not his fault and b) he knows exactly how and why it is all happening. Kata is one of those middle class white people who has decided that the Native Americans (and aboriginals everywhere) are a more noble form of human being and so she has decided to remake herself in her Romanticized image of them. Mr Mitchell makes his share of condescending and paranoid comments about the various vernacular landscapes and people that they encounter. His overwrought and absurd fear of three people out target-shooting in a sandpit is particularly ridiculous.

However, there is a third quasi-level to the book that includes Mr. Mitchell's recurring observations of the hypocrisy or at any rate silliness that is inherent in the outlooks of his two friends and, to a lesser extent, his own prejudices. His friend Barkley prides himself on his asceticism, but Mr. Mitchell describes in some detail the lavish gourmet lunch that Barkley brings (eggs mimosa!) and the high tech outdoor clothes that he wears. Kata's perspective is sent up by a hilarious story of the visit of a band of Cree to Concord. A New Age do-gooder invites them to a ceremony only to have them refuse to stay at her house because she doesn't have a TV and they want to see a hockey game and then show up two hours late for the ceremony and have nothing to say except the Lord's prayer. It is this sly knowingness that redeems the book, which would otherwise be annoyingly arch.