Quiet Desperation, Savage Delight: Sheltering with Thoreau in the Age of Crisis

by David Gessner

When the pandemic struck, nature writer David Gessner turned to Henry David Thoreau, the original social distancer, for lessons on how to live. Those lessons—of learning our own backyard, re-wilding, loving nature, self-reliance, and civil disobedience—hold a secret that could help save us as we face the greater crisis of climate.

Genres: Nonfiction

377 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2021

About the author

David Gessner is the author of fourteen books that blend a love of nature, humor, memoir, and environmentalism, including the New York Times bestselling, All the Wild That Remains, Return of the Osprey, Sick of Nature and Leave It As It Is: A Journey Through Theodore Roosevelt’s American Wilderness.

Gessner is the Thomas S. Kenan III Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where he is also the founder and Editor-in-Chief of the literary magazine, Ecotone. His own magazine publications include pieces in the New York Times Magazine, Outside, Sierra, Audubon, Orion, and many other magazines, and his prizes include a Pushcart Prize and the John Burroughs Award for Best Nature Essay for his essay “Learning to Surf.” He has also won the Association for Study of Literature and the Environment’s award for best book of creative writing, and the Reed Award for Best Book on the Southern Environment. In 2017 he hosted the National Geographic Explorer show, "The Call of the Wild."

He is married to the novelist Nina de Gramont, whose latest book is The Christie Affair.

“A master essayist.” –Booklist

“For nature-writing enthusiasts, Gessner needs no introduction. His books and essays have in many ways redefined what it means to write about the natural world, coaxing the genre from a staid, sometimes wonky practice to one that is lively and often raucous.”—Washington Post.

“David Gessner has been a font of creativity ever since the 1980s, when he published provocative political cartoons in that famous campus magazine, the Harvard Crimson. These days he’s a naturalist, a professor and a master of the art of telling humorous and thought-provoking narratives about unusual people in out-of-the way-places."
--The San Francisco Chronicle

Reviews

[Larry Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

David Gessner, the author of a dozen books on environmental themes and cultural figures in America (Theodore Roosevelt, Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner) is the winner of several book awards and the chair of the Creative Writing Department at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Now approaching 60, he takes on a lifelong hero in the figure of Henry David Thoreau.
Though Thoreau’s example of keeping a journal and making a hut away from busyness inspired him, Gessner is quick to suggest the variance in their lifestyles. Gessner is a husband and father and often likes to share a beer with others. His rugged hut in North Carolina cannot compare with the precision of Thoreau’s cabin. They do think alike on the subjects of our earth environment and its possible survival, and they take activist stands for individualism, science, and social justice, but their methods of thinking differ.
While he describes Henry as a most imperative writer, chiefly in Walden which is full of reader advice if not demands, Gessner is more relaxed in tone and structure. Thoreau structures his sentences and paragraphs with deliberation for effect, as one might a speech, while Gessner, who also gives speeches, is looser, often falling into a ramble that yet rings with solid truths. Thoreau’s books are more lectures, Gessner’s more casual talks that flow in several directions yet arrive at a focused theme.
Gessner overstates some when he claims, “Henry is all imperative. All musts and shoulds. Even when not explicitly didactic, he speaks in what I’d call the implied imperative. He is one of our deepest thinkers, but at the same time, he is the worst ranter in your dorm room after his second bong hit. And yet, while you could say his words are prescriptive, it is really up to us, his readers, how prescriptively we take them. The prescription, it turns out, might be one we need to fill. Thoreau is astringent medicine. But for now he is necessary medicine.”
The thesis of this book in fact is that right now in the arc of this restrictive Covid-19 pandemic we can learn much from fellow isolate Henry David Thoreau. There are countless references to the pandemic and its cost on our lives as individuals and community and a world. Each chapter begins with a new tally of those infected and those who have died from the virus. Yet the author sees possible gains in this solitude, even if it is forced.
Ginger Strand finds Gessner’s treatment of Thoreau as both broad and reliable. She states, “Thoreau becomes a conduit to thinking about friendship, parenting, race, aging, technology, home, climate change, justice, and death. Gessner shows us how, rather than burying ourselves in old books, we might use them to go out and meet the world, in all its wild and broken beauty."

Here is the reflective David Gessner at his best, bringing a clearer perspective to a situation by recognizing its complexity and our struggle:

"So perhaps what I’m asking of myself, and of you, is that we hold two opposite things in our minds at once. One is a grim picture of a weed-filled, overheated planet that we can’t shy away from looking at if we’re to have any chance of preventing it. The other is a still wild world, and therefore a joyful, varied, verdant world, where boars roam the streets and green herons roost and sea turtles haul out on the beaches and flamingos pink the ponds and grizzlies return to their historic ranges. That wild world—the whole wondrous nonhuman creation—is poised to resurrect the whole wondrous nonhuman creation—is poised to resurrect itself, ready to come bursting back—if we only give it the chance and room and air to do so."

David Gessner does not fail us in this friendly and reflective study of a great writer and our times. (from New York Jounal of Books June 1, 2021

[Rick · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really liked this book. It's more than a record of living through the COVID year of 2020, with all the masks, the vaccines, the "sheltering in place" lives, and the political turmoil of that year. Here in 2022 we still wear masks and we still keep socially distanced - mostly - from each other. Gessner's book records his nature observations, birds, climate change, storms, and wild plants. Here is a Thoreauvian writer - he loves Thoreau as if you couldn't tell from the title - who respects the natural world and hopes for a better one with change we can tolerate.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Personal essays written March 2019-March 2020 consider the pandemic, Thoreau and what it means to be at home in a place (in this case, North Carolina). Gessner is a fluid writer and pleasant to read, but for a self-described Nature writer he seems reluctant to acknowledge Aldo Leopold's World of Wounds. He contemplates arguing with Rick Bass against grizzly bear conservation just to be perverse (not a good idea), and at one point imagines cliff swallows returning to a nest site ruined by construction of a McMansion:

"Maybe this group returned, saw what happened, gave the bird equivalent of a shrug, then flew a few hundred yards down the beach to where the larger bluff awaited them." [p.333]

Umm... no, they didn't, because some idiot built a McMansion there, too.

Edited to say: I gave this book to my dad and he totally loved it. His take was that part of the charm is how many of the people around Gessner (i.e. Rick Bass, a fishing friend, etc...) seem more successful that Gessner himself at achieving Thoreau's ideal.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this at the Walden store when we visited Walden Pond this summer. Even though I teach American Literature, I have never really gotten into the transcendentalists or their works. Over the last year though, especially after visiting Walden, I have become a big Thoreau fan girl- which is what drew me to this book.

Gessner writes through the first year of the pandemic, connecting it to Thoreau's time at Walden as well as his life in general. I enjoyed this.

My only tiny issue is that he seems to dis his time in North Carolina, his adopted home. That's mostly because I live in North Carolina now, and while it isn't my home state (I'm a South Carolina girl born and raised), I think this state and its people has its only beauty that is found nowhere else in the the country. I got a little feel of "the north is better than this backwards place," which always makes the hair on my neck stand up. Lewis Grizzard once said "I-95 goes both ways."

[Lee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ya kind of lost it here Gessner. After reading Leave It As It Is & All the Wild that remains, this read is disappointing. To much copying from his journals and not enough Thoreau, an appreciation of whom I wanted to achieve reading this book, 'Sheltering with Thoreau in the Age of Crisis'. I'll put book at side table picking up occasionally to read a few pages. Nov 20.....tried reading again but no go. I'm just reading Gessner's Journels from his time closeted because of COVID. Rather read my Journal.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is no easy answer, but how do we participate in the world today without losing it when honestly witnessing what is going on around us? Do we bury our heads in the sand? This is what the author struggles with as he relates how Thoreau grew into this question during his time. Thoreau's life events registered deeply with him, they had a clear meaning that faithfully guided him. We can choose those lives to live by, to model our own after.

[John Fredrickson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a journal of sorts, structured loosely on the Covid years of isolation, but it ranges widely, beginning with ruminative reflections on Thoreau and what he was all about, then proceeding to discussions on Montaigne, Cape Cod, North Carolina, some history, some economics, and more.

When the book opened, I was unsure whether it would be a good choice for me, but Gessner won me over through his attentive approach to the natural world around him, and his thoughtful discussions of Thoreau, Emerson, Montaigne, and other writers.

I learned a lot from this book. While Gessner's appreciation of the natural world is verbally communicable, it is not of the nature (pun intended) to be experientially shareable. It is clear that it would be fun to go on a nature walk with him, as his knowledge of his environment is sound. While reading this book, I ended up purchasing a book on Montaigne's essays and a book of his life, drawn by the descriptions of Montaigne by Gessner. There are also historical references in the book that I knew nothing of, particularly of the Wilmington, NC coup in which white Southern Democrats decided to ensure their political advantages by slaughtering blacks.

The book is pretty discursive (not in a negative way), touching on many subjects, coming back to Thoreau to gain some perspective, then moving on to a new subject. All in all, a very interesting book.

[Harold Jr. · Rating 3 out of 5]

More about David than Henry

It is always good to see how others dealt with the pandemic beginning in March 2020. David Gesser provides a good roadmap for that in this book which is less about Thoreau than about himself. At least he was and is clearly inspired by Henry. A real potpourri of thoughts — this is not an organized book, but mixes natural history with journal writing and politics. Not as good as his book about Edward Abbey and Wallace Stegner, but an engaging read nonetheless.

[Laura Pritchett · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a gift. I have to say, what I DID expect was to learn more about Thoreau, which I most certainly did. What I did NOT expect was to be pulled back to that year, that first year of covid-- the rising death counts, the getting used to masks, all that early confusion and terror. It’s a piece of history recorded as it is happening. This book also takes us into home building, cancer, reading, books, social justice, this country . . .. it’s a very dense book (not in the sense of hard to read, but how much it goes into). The workings of a Great Mind. A slow and thoughtful read. Love it.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the first year of the COVID pandemic and lockdown, Gessner ruminates on the wisdom of Thoreau and its application to our modern lives and this time of crisis. It does often read like a journal, much as Thoreau wrote, so there are often not clear answers but it gives the author space to explore his love of nature while questioning our way of life. Highly recommended.

[Jeff Williamson · Rating 5 out of 5]

thoughtful about thoughtfulness

An interesting and well written travel log about place and life’s influence on the thinking of a historic influencer who appreciated people as citizens of a complex ecology that evolves through complex relationships which compose the songs of the world.

[Jim Woolwine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quiet Desperation would have been my review lede for this book had I not persevered until it concluded. The author, an English professor confined during COVID-19, does what - of course, writes a book in his confinement. His approach, linking COVID-19, Henry Thoreau, and the environment, is a plea for society to clean up its table manners before global warming, pollution, and environmental disasters destroy the planet. Each chapter starts with the deadly statistical progress of COVID-19 infections and deaths. His chapters tie Thoreau's respect for his environs, the author's profound knowledge of the life cycles of the birds migrating to and from his North Carolina home, and Cape Cod's ever-evolving coastline into a moving paean to us to clean up our act.