Wood Lit - Summer 2008
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Go With Me
On Sunday afternoon, I picked up Castle Freeman’s Go With Me, and started reading it around 4:00. I finished sometime after 9:00, stopping only to throw more wood in the woodstove. I didn’t stop for supper, just kept going, couldn’t put it down.
There’s two things worth noting about that. It’s a novel that’s on the short side – 176 pages. What a treat to be able to read a fully realized novel in one sitting. The other thing is that the story-telling is so good, the characters so finely drawn, the dialogue so offbeat and true that I didn’t want to leave the world that Freeman creates.
The world is present-day Vermont, but not the Vermont Life or the Chamber of Commerce version. This is the down-at-the-heels Vermont that you can be privy to if you choose to be, but most people in polite society don’t. It’s a harsh underworld of cinder block roadhouses and backwoods towns where a bully can still rule the roost, and where the young and innocent aren’t so innocent. The heroine is a gutter-mouthed handful, and the two heroes, Nate and Les, are a monosyllabic young buck and a crafty geezer.
They are unlikely heroes, but when asked, they’re perfectly willing to take up Lillian’s cause, which leads them into confrontation with Blackway, the town’s bully. Their pursuit takes them on a tour of the rural underbelly, and while Nate keeps mouthing “I ain’t afraid of Blackway,” we know that he certainly should be.
While Les and Nate are on their quest, we learn more about what they are up against by visiting with Whizzer, Coop, and DB back at what used to be a chair factory, who knock back a case of beer before quitting time. Castle Freeman knows these characters well and he portrays them with grace, humor, and not a shred of condescension. Their tales, their digs at each other, their speculations provide a hilarious counterpoint to the very real drama happening out on the road.
Freeman is a fabulous writer with a couple of previous novels and a collection of stories under his belt. I hope that Go With Me introduces him to a wider audience.
Stephen Long
© 2008 by the author; this article may not be copied or reproduced without the author's consent.
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Naked in the Woods
On August 13, 1913, Joe Knowles, without clothing, shoes, tools, or food, walked into the woods near Eustis, Maine, for a two-month publicity stunt that pitted man against the elements. For the next two months, he would keep the world apprised of his fortunes and adventures via a series of penned missives in charcoal on birch bark, fed directly into the maw of the Boston Post’s publicity machine.
Jim Motavalli’s Naked in the Woods chronicles the life and exploits of Knowles, an ex-sailor, hunting guide, painter, actor, possible fraud, and, finally, a pawn in the legendary battles for readership of the nation’s powerful newspapers. Knowles’s North Woods caper was followed by a similar stunt in northern California, the news value of which was eclipsed by the coincidental outbreak of World War I. With a spell in Hollywood, Knowles’s flavor of wilderness feats devolved into a tabloid tale: in 1916, Knowles, then 46, and Elaine Hammerstein, the beautiful 20-year-old scion of the famous Hammerstein family, were headed for another naked, fend-for-yourself foray, this time into the wild Adirondacks. Hammerstein, who was chosen for this role by none other than William Randolph Hearst, was referred to as Dawn Woman; Knowles was Dawn Man. Unfortunately, Dawn Woman, after a short apprenticeship with Knowles that involved sleeping under the stars in the grass clothing and shelter she had made under his tutelage, thought better of the whole enterprise and headed back to New York.
What makes the life of Joe Knowles so interesting is not so much his exploits, which sound all too much like the reality shows of today, but why people found him interesting in the second decade of the twentieth century. Motavalli frames his curious tale with ample background on the sociological ills of the times. With the taming of the West and the movement of large segments of the population off the farm and into the rhythm of factory work and city life, Americans were becoming increasingly concerned about their lack of exposure to nature and the skills it requires of us. Knowles wrote in his book Alone in the Wilderness, a chronicle of his Maine adventure, “Today, all kinds of luxury surrounds the average boy.” Boy Scouting began in this era, and Jack London’s Call of the Wild was the most popular novel of the times. Knowles was viewed by many as a modern-day Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, or Mike Fink, at a time when the heroes of the fading West had lost their luster. On the other hand, there were plenty who believed Knowles to be nothing but a “nature faker,” a term coined by naturalist John Burroughs, who along with rough rider, outdoorsman, conservationist, and President Teddy Roosevelt, deplored the nature experts of the times who were “all hat and no cattle,” as they say.
The controversy that surrounds the authenticity of Knowles’s exploits is a major part of Naked in the Woods. Knowles’s first chronicled foray into the wilds of Maine was spent eating beans and drinking beer in a comfortable cabin by the side of a lake close to the spot in the woods where he built a shelter (according to Knowles’s accuser, the cabin had a large pile of food cans and beer bottles behind it). Knowles claims to have killed a small bear for its pelt and found a deer killed by a wildcat, which he used to make some rudimentary leggings. He even left some “put up” food in the lean-to he had constructed. But he finished his two months in the woods by emerging 40 miles east in Megantic, Quebec. Some say he had to hike there to work off the weight he put on drinking beer and eating beans for two months. Others say he emerged in Megantic to elude Maine game wardens, who knew he had taken a bear out of season. Or did he? Who knows? But it sure makes a fine tale.
Carl Demrow
© 2008 by the author; this article may not be copied or reproduced without the author's consent.
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Ginseng, Goldenseal and Other Woodland Medicinals
For many of us who have considered, tried, succeeded, or failed in growing ginseng, help is here in W. Scott Persons’s updated Ginseng, Goldenseal and Other Woodland Medicinals. Written with Jeanine M. Davis, this compendium of practical advice on how to cultivate and market woodland medicinals is just what might get more people involved in digging and planting.
Persons has grown ginseng for a living for nearly 30 years right outside his front door in western North Carolina. His 1994 book on ginseng cultivation has been one of the best resources for the woodland ginseng grower available. In this new book, he presents updated information on cultivation as well as the history of global ginseng trade from ancient times to North American Colonial times and on to the present. A fact that has not made its way into standard textbooks, for example, is the role ginseng trade played in Colonial economics as one of the two major exports, the other being raw furs. Wild ginseng played a critical role by providing many pioneer homesteaders with cash they needed until their first crops came in. The fortune of John Jacob Astor is said to have begun with ginseng trade to China. Even Daniel Boone traded in ginseng.
Early chapters provide ginseng’s botany, life cycle, habitat requirements, and range, presented so that the reader may easily compare these with a specific site under consideration. The author then covers three basic methods of growing ginseng, along with tables of production budgets for each. He covers the harvesting and processing of roots and seeds and the important business decisions you will need to make if you plan to sell your crop. A timetable of what to do when is spiced up with details accrued from years of experience. Pages of resources, including plant stock suppliers and websites, are most valuable, and photographs, illustrations, graphs, and tables abound.
While the harvest of wild ginseng was a booming business that has severely depleted wild stands, today most of the world’s ginseng is grown in cleared fields under artificial shade. Persons lays out this method in detail, including specifications for several types of lathe structures, plus planting and culture points. He also spells out two other methods. “Wild Simulated” planting calls for seeds to be planted in existing woods and left to grow naturally. In this method, choosing the site is crucial. In addition to the ideal slope and orientation, the author lists plants that enjoy the same conditions as ginseng, so that you can be more certain ginseng will thrive there if you find the companions in your forest.
Studies seem to show that ginseng thrives best in soils rich in calcium. Northern growers with stands of sugar maples can expect good levels of calcium in the soils. The author quotes Robert Beyfuss, the Cornell Cooperative Extension Agent for Greene County, New York: “Sugar maple trees accumulate calcium in their leaves. They use their leaves as biological “sinks.” All trees use their leaves as biological sinks during the growing season, but most trees suck their nutrients out before the leaves drop, particularly oak trees. Sugar maples, however, do not do that. Sugar maples concentrate calcium in the leaf tissue, and when they drop those leaves there’s a tremendous storage of calcium right in that leaf litter….” This is good news for many northern woodland owners interested in ginseng.
The third method is “Woods Cultivation,” in which land is cleared within the woods to accommodate beds for planting. Again, the steps are laid out, including tables to determine the potential of a particular site.
Persons winds up his discussion with pages on diseases, pests, and poachers before sailing into rich and lengthy interviews with two ginseng growers – one in North Carolina and the other a pioneer grower in Australia.
Jeanine Davis wrote the second half of this book, sharing her 20 years of experience studying and growing woodland medicinals, noting the call for these is on the rise. Goldenseal, wild leeks, and 11 other woodland plants are presented with cultural requirements and marketing potential. Like Persons, she gives entertaining stories of individuals growing these plants for sale.
At first glance I thought advice from two North Carolinians could be off the mark for northern growers, but the material is offered with such ample data as to be useful indeed. Inspiring, too.
Jo Liddell
© 2008 by the author; this article may not be copied or reproduced without the author's consent.
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