Leslie Leyland Fields is at home in the wilderness. The author, speaker, and CT editorial board member dwells with her husband and children on remote Kodiak Island, Alaska. In the summer, she and her family retreat to nearby Harvester Island, where (as the island’s sole residents) they run a commercial salmon fishing operation. CT asked Fields to choose 5 books best read in the wilderness.
Two Old Women by Velma Wallis
If you’re nervous about going “Into the Wild,” don’t take that book; take this one. Wallis, herself Athabascan, serves us an Alaskan Athabascan legend about two elderly women abandoned by their hungry tribe during a winter famine. Their canny survival through a brutal winter and their eventual return to the tribe as wise elders offers an extended parable on perseverance and community. If you’re having trouble running with the wolves, or running to the outhouse in the dark, this is for you.
The Wisdom of Wilderness by Gerald G. May
We’ve been retreating to the wilderness looking for God ever since our expulsion from Eden. May, a well-known psychologist and theologian, penned his final book about forays into the woods while dying of cancer. With thoughtful abandon, he drums with cicadas, watches a swan drown a duck, and lies breathless in his tent as a bear passes. But wilderness is not just a place; it’s a state of being. May illuminates the ways we can find joy and healing through what he calls the “Power of the Slowing.”
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
Yes, a predictable choice. But few writers model attentiveness to muskrats, water beetles, the bacterial mud between our toes, and their transcendent rewards and mysteries better than Dillard. This book, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1975, launched a new wave of nature writing. It remains a primer in observation, biology, and wonder. She may overreach at times, but I predict you’ll soon be lacing up your boots and plunging into the forest, notebook in hand.
The Major Works by Gerard Manley Hopkins
If Dillard’s acute observations don’t launch you out of your shelter, you’re a hard case in need of poetry. Hopkins, a 19th-century Jesuit, delivers not just sight but also sound. He’ll unplug you from your devices and plunge you straight into the sound and presence of finches’ wings, “rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim,” and “all things counter, original, spare, strange.” You’ll toss your watch and mark time by image and rhythm, offering back your own “Glory Be to God.”
Godric by Frederick Buechner
Curl up by the fire and let Godric, the earthiest of English saints, sing you back to the 12th century. His story begins, “Five friends I had, and two of them snakes. Tune and Fairweather they were, thick round as a man’s arm . . . keepers of my skimped hearth and hermit’s heart till in a grim pet I bade them go that day and nevermore to come again.” Godric’s journey through the wilderness of self and pride toward God will pierce you with its knowing and beauty.
