THE QUIET HUNT

Gathering—one of two ways of finding food in nature (along with hunting) throughout human history—gets its due.

In the days before gardens, farms, and supermarkets, writes Pendziwol in graceful free verse, when “food came / only / from the wild,” some hunters would arm themselves and go out in search of meat. But others on a quieter “hunt” peacefully plucked, picked, or dug up foods and medicines that were “waiting to be found” and sustainably gathered. She suggests that this second hunt fed our ancestors’ souls as well as their bodies and that such tangible and intangible rewards are still available to modern foragers—even in urban or developed areas, “if you know what to look for.” This last caution and two more strongly worded ones, including a stern note at the beginning that the book is not intended to be a field guide to wild edibles, should be enough to keep unsupervised young nature lovers from sampling unidentified weeds and berries—even though Hugo’s illustrations feature people diverse of age, race, and era (including Indigenous foragers in breechclout, fringed and beaded buckskin) filling collection baskets with veggies as well as suggestively tempting spot images of unlabeled flora and fungi.

A loving invitation to sample nature’s pantry.