“Lumberjack: The History, The Lore, The Life” by Lauren Jarvis (Sterling, $19.95). Outdoorsy readers should absolutely not miss … For a book this good, seldom is heard a discouraging word. It’s accomplished in a stream-of-consciousness that feels like that quick dash you make through the house before you take a last-minute trip: things are grabbed at random and you’ll figure it out later.Īnd that’s okay outdoor enthusiasts, farmers, environmentalist, and readers who can laugh will find that there’s where the fun of “Where the Deer and the Antelope Play” lies, and there’s no getting up at 4 a.m. Offerman muses about this and that, and general subjects that are ultimately tied to the outdoors and nature in a guys-in-the-mancave kind of way, with wild and wooly thrown in for good measure. Getting outside is actor-author Nick Offerman’s opportunity to meander, both physically and literarily, and so this book isn’t just about parks and farms and such. Loaded with funny observations and laced with profanity, “Where the Deer and the Antelope Play” is not just what’s promised. It was an opportunity to work with his hands, build stone fences, and to think about “the deeply flawed system” that American farmers work against.Īnd then the pandemic hit, and you know what an enthusiastic outdoorsman does when he’s supposed to stay inside: he buys “twenty feet of Ford and thirty of Airstream” that he barely knows how to use, and heads cross-country.
Plus, outdoorsy hikes are great excuses to buy gear.īecause he’d likewise been “glued” to the works of author James Rebanks, Offerman also traveled to England that year, to spend time on Rebanks’ sheep farm. The wilderness was “pristine,” trails were sometimes challenging, wildlife surprised them, and Offerman had chances to muse on the works of Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps, and how Native Americans lost their land.
”Īnd so, in July of 2019, Offerman hired a guide, met two close friends in Montana, and went on a week-long fact-finding hike in Glacier National Park. The Berry stories – and meeting the Berry family – convinced him to want to write “about our population’s general lack of any intimate knowledge of nature.
Twenty-five years ago, when he was still surviving by “creating pop culture of one sort or another,” someone gave Nick Offerman “some Wendell Berry stories.” Agrarian in nature, those tales captivated Offerman then, as now, and they spurred him to act.Īs a kid growing up on an Illinois farm, he was always outside but when he received those stories, Offerman says his focus was off: he’d been pursuing “shiny materialism” rather than natural things.
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