INTO THE WOODS...AND BEYOND

Altschuler shares memories and lessons learned during his time living off the grid and connecting with nature in this memoir.

In 1977, when the author was 30, he felt burned out by his job as a prison social worker, had recently divorced, and felt a sense of aimlessness. This led him to take a break from his urban existence and move into a small cabin in the woods at the base of Southwestern New Hampshire’s Barrett Mountain. The single-room abode, originally a tool shed, had no electricity, no telephone, and no indoor plumbing, although an outhouse was attached to the main structure. His goal was to devote himself to writing and seek inner calm. He would do so for more than three years. The physical rigors of sustenance—chopping wood for his stove, collecting water from a nearby stream, foraging, and planting—quieted his mind, and during his first summer, he began writing, narrating, and producing what became a popular five-minute local radio program, Backwoods Cabin. On Christmas Eve 1977, his car was vandalized, and foot power became his sole mode of transportation; the slower pace allowed him to focus on, and write about, his spiritual connection with the natural world. This memoir suffers from some occasional repetition and long-winded philosophizing. However, there’s often a compelling, Zen-influenced musicality and immediacy to Altschuler’s prose—a wistfulness that’s occasionally tinged with humor, which makes the work especially effective when read in short bursts. Of the melting snow that signaled the arrival of spring, for instance, he writes, “For there arose a certain pain and sadness seeing this ace starter, snow, slink off the mound toward the dugout, knocked about by a slurry of cheap singles.” When he finally returned to city life, he settled across the continent in Berkeley, California, bringing this same descriptive attention to his frequent forays along the winding trails that abut the city: The lives of the local hummingbird and red-tailed hawk, he writes, “meant singing, sipping, soaring without a moment’s doubt, with total trust in the truth of the present.”

A tender, engaging, and environmentally timely work.