Take a Walk on the Wild Side - Green Gazette

Enlarge Image Image Gallery On the Wild Edge: In Search of a Natural Life by David Petersen (Henry Holt and Co., 2005). Order this book at Mother Earth Shopping.

Issue #215, April/May 2006

Green Gazette

By Jena Ball

David Petersen would be the first to admit that his story is not unusual. Plenty of naturalists-turned-writers, including Edward Abbey, Wendell Berry and Rick Bass, have turned their backs on city life and gone looking for “someplace quieter and closer to the natural world.” In Petersen’s case, after “years of slow-burning boredom and simmering frustration,” he and his wife, Caroline, loaded all their possessions into a Volkswagen bus and left California for Colorado. What makes his story extraordinary — and a must-read for anyone who has considered making such a break — is Petersen’s ability to seduce, browbeat and cajole his readers into opening their hearts and minds to the raw power of life “on the wild edge.”

The book opens with Petersen on the first of many marathon walks. He tells how he came to be “striding up this comforting old mountain … high as a hippie on the pure animal joy of self-powered movement.” He invites us to help solve a murder mystery involving an elk carcass and a flock of ravens. And he delivers a lecture on the value of living “up here in the cold, quiet dusk, versus down there in the ‘real’ world of civilized, homogenized, capitalized culture.” Not bad for the first 17 pages.

The rest of the chapters continue in the same vein — riveting scenes segue into natural history lessons, hilarious escapades or lengthy discourses. Petersen is passionate about the life he’s chosen, and he is a fierce champion of the land and the wildlife he shares it with. Petersen has made it his business to become intimately acquainted with everything from the mating calls of turkeys —Gobble-obble gob-obble-obble— to the life cycle of his beloved aspen trees, or “quakies.” A single, simple detail, such as a claw-scarred piece of wood, can release a cascade of poignant memories. Petersen is at his best in these moments, weaving personal stories and natural history into seamless narrative that will quench a deep, if unrecognized, thirst in his readers.