Raising Wild: Dispatches from a Home in the Wilderness - Inspiring Memoir of Wilderness Living for Nature Lovers, Off-Grid Families & Adventure Seekers - Perfect for Cabin Life, Homesteading & Outdoor Enthusiasts

I’ve been an admirer of Michael Branch’s creative nonfiction writing for a while now, having read a few of the chapters included in Raising Wild when they were published in somewhat different form in such influential environmental magazines as Orion and Ecotone. I was anxious to read more of his writing and preordered Raising Wild. It just arrived at my door a few days ago and what a treat! Reading most of the book in one sitting—and reading across such varied topics as pronghorn antelope (my favorite chapter), Thanksgiving turkeys, starting up a family vegetable garden, pregnancy and childbirth—helped to crystallize for me the qualities of Branch’s writing that I so admire. I have a keen interest in nature and the environment, so there’s that. But his essays also productively challenge, explicitly and implicitly, the stubborn divide between wildness and domesticity, that false dichotomy promulgated by the many, mostly masculine, retreat narratives in the literary canon (e.g., Thoreau’s Walden, Twain’s Huck Finn). “I too have retreated to the wild,” Branch writes, “but I have retreated with my family, rather than from them.” The prominent role of his daughters throughout the book bears out his contention. Further, Branch manages to write personal essays that are not the least bit self-absorbed. His chapters frequently begin with a personal experience or anecdote, reflections on his “self,” so to speak, but are always looking outward with equal interest, imagination, and insight. For example, an essay that begins by recounting his reluctance to become a father flowers into a meditation upon the sea and the significance of various watery places in the literary works of Whitman, Melville, Shakespeare, and Thoreau; his daughter’s first glimpse of a pronghorn inspires an essay on the fascinating 20 million-year-old evolutionary history of this “prairie ghost”; stargazing in the desert leads him to research what the ancient Greeks, Hindus, and the Navajo closer to home thought about his daughter’s favorite constellation; a devastating home fire offers Branch the opportunity to examine the relationship between trauma and art. It’s this expansive and ever-curious quality of Branch’s mind that makes these essays resonate with me. Oh, and the humor! Some moments are drop-dead hysterical. I defy anyone to read “Freebirds,” which meditates upon the customary Presidential Pardons of a single turkey in advance of Thanksgiving, without cracking up. If you love the environment, your family, or both, I’m sure you’ll also love reading Raising Wild.