On the Wild Edge : In Search of a Natural Life

From Booklist
Although he might bristle at such a comparison, like Thoreau, Petersen is a man who chooses to "live deliberately." For him, this means a nearly self-sustaining existence high in the Colorado Rockies. He built his own home, hunts for his own food, walks gently through the forest, leaves little trace of himself upon the land. Taking the reader through one year of his life, Petersen squeezes the essence out of each season in a dialogue that embraces both the metaphorical and practical aspects of living in the midst of nature's rapidly diminishing bounty. One comes to learn as much about the life cycles of the elk and bear that were the mountains' earliest and, he hopes, eternal residents as about Petersen himself. Nestled within his compelling and frequently humorous recollections of near-death exploits and mundane daily rituals, Petersen eloquently communicates his deeply held environmental ethos. Honest, outspoken, and unabashedly conscientious, Petersen is a passionate advocate for the responsible stewardship of the land and its inhabitants. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Book Description
A naturalist captures the beauty and capriciousness of nature as he reflects on twenty-five years of life on a mountainside in southwestern Colorado

Twenty-five years ago David Petersen and his wife, Caroline, pulled up stakes, trading Laguna Beach, California, for a snug hand-built cabin in the wilderness. Today he knows that mountain land as intimately as anyone has ever known his family, his lover, or his own true self. He has become so attuned to his environment, as this memoir demonstrates, that when a dead twig snaps, he knows what stepped on it, how much it weighs, and what its intentions are.

The author conflates a quarter century into the adventures of four high-country seasons, tracking the rigors of survival from the snowmelt that announces the arrival of spring to the decline and death of autumn and winter that will establish the fertile ground needed for next spring's rebirth. Throughout each instance of personal history and story, Petersen illustrates the complete reciprocity of nature where the same impulse that governs the flight of elk or bear also governs the predator's impulse of pursuit.

In the past we listened to Henry David Thoreau and Aldo Leopold; today it is Petersen's turn. A committed believer in Thoreau's dictum "in wildness is the preservation of the earth," Petersen's observations are lyrical, scientific, and from the heart. In this chaotic age, his clear, direct prose is rich with mystery and soul, his words a plea for the survival of the remnant wilderness that surrounds us.



About the Author
David Petersen lives with his wife, Caroline, and a series of dogs in a little cabin on a big mountain in the American Southwest near Durango, Colorado. Prior to leaving behind a conventional life, Petersen was an officer and pilot in the U.S. Marines, managing editor of a national motorcycle magazine, two-time college graduate, mailman, beach bum, and western editor for Mother Earth News. On the Wild Edge is Petersen's "lucky thirteenth" book.



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Thoreauvian seasons in the Rockies. The cabin that nature-writer Petersen (Elkheart, 1998, etc.) built in the hills above Durango, Colorado, measures 596 square feet-tiny by expansionist American standards, but still four times larger than the famed cabin, the granddaddy of them all, that flanks Walden Pond. Their VW bus stuffed with LPs and back-to-the-land treatises, Petersen and his bride found their way to the place in the early '80s, having fled crowded southern California and xenophobic Montana. Colorado was different: it was open to newcomers, and perhaps too open, for Petersen's song of praise for the semiwilderness, "edge" life closes with a bitter lament about the overcrowding that has come about precisely because so many other baby boomers have decided that edge life is for them, too. Whatever the case, on the flank of Missionary Ridge the migrants of a quarter-century past found "the serenity, purity, and unpredictability of real mountains." They also found a low-impact way of life that has sustained them for all that time: on the plus side, the blessed be-here-now freedom of not having jobs, car payments, children, and other quotidian concerns of the acquisitive American greedhead set; on the minus side, not having any money, a matter that comes to a head when Caroline is diagnosed with malignant cancer, "the karmic dues of industrial culture." That crisis forces Petersen to question whether his "elective semipoverty and arrogant independence" is not a species of self-indulgence that runs the risk of condemning his wife to death-a righteous concern, given the healthcare system's disdain for the poor, even those who, like Petersen, hunt for their supper, keep a low profile,and don't ask anything of the state except the right to be left alone. There's enough blood sport here to offend the meat-is-murder set, enough Ed Abbeyesque grumbling to offend anyone who drives a Hummer or a Beemer, and enough good writing to please those who cherish their own sojourns on the edge.


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