OP: Stalking the Faraway Places
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David McKay Company, Inc., New York, 1973. Hardcover. Very Good. First printing.
At the time his first book, Stalking the Wild Asparagus (1962), was published, Euell Gibbons (1911–1975) was an unknown author, but after its release and abundant success, he became a figurehead of the back-to-the-land movement.
Gibbons’ expertise developed out of a nomadic and impoverished upbringing in which foraging for wild foods was truly a matter of survival. This 1973 memoir—written after settling into marriage, parenthood, and a writing career—is the result of Gibbons’ realization that, while at times fraught, a childhood in the wilderness also brought tremendous joy and connection to the natural world. The luxuries of a more stable adulthood allowed him, with wife and young children in tow, to revisit life unfettered by flavorless grocery store produce and wholly dictated by the seasons and landscape.
Stalking the Faraway Places follows the Gibbons family on an immersive road trip across the country, living off the land all the while. In the Southwest they’ll eat porcupine steamed with bunchgrass in an underground oven, served with a side of stinging nettles, cattail rhizomes, mint, and wild onions; and off the coast of Maine, a meal of mussels, bayberry tea, beach peas, arugula and orach salad, and raspberries has a polarizing effect between the adventurous eaters and the skeptics.
Philosophical meditations on living a/ the good life, food politics, ecology, and stewardship are abundant and encouraging.
Our copy is a Very Good first printing. Minor wear to the jacket.
