Six Walks: In the Footsteps of Henry David Thoreau
Ben Shattuck
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Six Walks: In the Footsteps of Henry David Thoreau
Ben Shattuck
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Shattuck’s memoir is much more than a paean to Thoreau. In this resonant little volume of reflections, which is enhanced by the author’s beautiful drawings, Shattuck frames his personal journey from despair to delight against the backdrop of six outings inspired by Thoreau’s mid 19th-century excursions. The result evokes not just Thoreau but Annie Dillard, and is a significant addition to what British nature writer Robert Macfarlane has called 'the literature of the leg'.
... moving.
... handsomely printed.
As Shattuck chronicles the six ambitious walks he takes over the years in warmly confiding prose and expressive, richly textured drawings, he also recounts passages in Thoreau’s life and quotes from his writings, notes how invaluable Thoreau’s meticulous documentation of the living world is to scientists, and marks how dramatically human endeavors and climate change have altered the land since Thoreau took its measure. Shattuck’s involving and poignant chronicle of immersions in nature, misadventures, family history, and a love story is shaped by his preternatural gift for discerning the essence of each moment and each place..
... resplendent.
The narrative sputters when it shifts to Shattuck’s time in Rhode Island, where family had lived, his relationship with his wife, Jenny, and an unfortunate accident years ago with a boat’s gunwale that resulted in the loss of the top part of his middle finger. Reliving Thoreau’s hiking and canoeing adventures in northern Maine’s Allagash Wilderness Waterway gets Shattuck back into his enthusiastic, poetic stride, describing the same black flies that had also accosted Thoreau, listening to bird song, and observing a double rainbow.
In the second half of these six walks, the author has recovered from his heartbreak and, perhaps inevitably, the work reflects this loss of urgency. Yet Shattuck shrewdly navigates the shift, turning his attention to the usefulness of sorrow, how underappreciated our painful moments are when we are in them.