EUELL'S COUNTRY

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The actual move, however, was delayed. It was in the period between that down payment and their 1963 relocation to the 13-acre Pennsylvania homestead (which cost a total of $5,000) that Freda urged Euell to work full time on his writing. Gibbons accepted her advice — and her financial support — and began work on a novel . . . which eventually evolved into a nonfictional paean to the art of foraging. The book, of course, was . . . Asparagus.

Within a year following their settling in Snyder County, Euell's first volume began to attract national attention. Ironically, he'd long dreamed of establishing a career as a novelist . . . instead, he was on his way to becoming a field-guide author of celebrity status.

The Gibbonses' new home was ideally suited to Euell's expanding career, too. It's smack in the middle of some fine foraging country. In fact, in my own two score and seven years in the same region, I've gathered everything from hickory nuts to freshwater mussels. (The shots of wild foods with this article were taken within 20 miles of Euell's place . . . some of them almost in his back yard!)

Gibbons and his wife stayed in the Pennsylvania residence until the master forager's death . . . during the night of December 29, 1975. Over the course of those years, Euell composed the rest of his series of wild-foods books, developed most of the material for Euell Gibbons' Handbook of Edible Wild Plants (written with Gordon Tucker and published posthumously), worked up the useful Feast on a Diabetic Diet (with his brother Joe), prepared numerous magazine articles, and — for several years — penned a regular column for Organic Gardening magazine.

It's certain, too, that the Pennsylvania Dutch farm country made its presence felt in those writings. On the other hand, it's just as certain that all of North America — indeed, anywhere that could satisfy this warm man's love of nature and his innocent, almost childlike joy at reaping what he did not sow — can rightly be called Euell's country.

While I was working as cohost for a Friday evening radio call-in show broadcast out of Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, l was lucky enough to have Euell as a guest one night. Although I remember that entire program fondly, the incident that stands out most clearly was Gibbons' reading of one of his own poems. Because few people have had a chance to enjoy this side of the naturalist's talent — and because this particular poem says a lot, in a very simplified manner, about Euell's beliefs — I asked Freda Gibbons for permission to include it with this article. She graciously consented.

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