Woodsqueer: Crafting a Sustainable Rural Life

by Gretchen Legler

"Woodsqueer" is sometimes used to describe the mindset of a person who has taken to the wild for an extended period of time. Gretchen Legler is no stranger to life away from the rapid-fire pace of the twenty-first century, which can often lead to a kind of stir-craziness. Woodsqueer chronicles her experiences intentionally focusing on not just making a living but making a life--in this case, an agrarian one more in tune with the earth on eighty acres in backwoods Maine.

Building a home with her partner, Ruth, on their farm means learning to live with solitude, endless trees, and the wild animals the couple come to welcome as family. Whether trying to outsmart their goats, calculating how much firewood they need for the winter, or bartering with neighbors for goods and services, they hone life skills brought with them (carpentry, tracking and hunting wild game) and other skills they learn along the way (animal husbandry, vegetable gardening, woodcutting).

Legler's story is at times humbling and grueling, but it is also amusing. A homage to agrarian American life echoing the back-to-the-land movement popularized in the mid-twentieth century, Woodsqueer reminds us of the benefits of living close to the land. Legler unapologetically considers what we have lost in America, in less than a century--individually and collectively--as a result of our urban, mass-produced, technology-driven lifestyles.
Illustrated with rustic pen-and-ink illustrations, Woodsqueer shows the value of a solitary sojourn and both the pathway to and possibilities for making a sustainable, meaningful life on the land. The result, for Legler and her partner, is an evolution of their humanity as they become more physically, emotionally, and even spiritually connected to their land and each other in a complex ecosystem ruled by the changing seasons.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Nature, Queer, LGBT, Adult, Essays

278 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 15, 2022

About the author

Gretchen Legler is currently an Master’s of Divinity candidate at Harvard Divinity School, focusing on the intersections of spirituality and ecology. She is on leave from her position as a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Maine at Farmington, where she specializes in memoir writing, the personal essay, and nonfiction essays about the natural world. She has taught in the MFA program in Creative Writing at the University of Alaska Anchorage and in the Low Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Southern New Hampshire University, and often offers community workshops on writing and the environment.

Previous to her stint at Divinity School, she and her partner, singer-songwirter Ruth Hill, owned a small farm in Western Maine, raising goats and chickens and their year’s supply of food. When not in Cambridge, MA, Gretchen lives in a one-room rustic cabin on a pond in the woods. In her community of Farmington, ME, Gretchen has been on the board of SAPARS, a volunteer chaplain at Franklin Memorial Hospital, and is the co-founder of the Left Bank of the Sandy River Gay & Lesbian Literature and Cultural Salon.

Reviews

[Molly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book got better and better as it went, as the author shared observations of the natural world, her place in it, and then sharing her reflections on her family, her relationship with her partner, and ultimately her growth in self-compassion through various paths. I enjoyed reading about many similar experiences of rural living to my own, including chicken raising, roosters, heating with wood, observing wildlife and hunting, and now I really connected as I make my way back into a rural life on 80 acres in Maine. It’s a beautiful memoir in a series of essays, and there are many stories that she shares that make her experience unique, surprising, and moving.

[Isa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is the author’s adventure journal of sorts as she makes a life homesteading in rural Maine. I picked it up because, as much as I love cosplaying ~*cottagecore*~, I’m also curious about how to actually live that lifestyle.

This book’s attitude toward nature was not so much idealistic as it was hopeful. It explores the ugliness of rural cottagecore reality: the local heroin addicts, homophobic slurs written on your property, the fear of freezing to death in winter if you didn’t chop enough wood in the summer and fall.

And yet there are beautiful moments: holding the goat you raised and feeling its beating heart as you milk it to make goat cheese, foraging mushrooms and berries off your own land, knowing the character of your hearth’s fire because you fed it the perfect cocktail of wood species.

I loved this book’s point about how you can buy this parcel of land to live out your pastoral dreams, complete with a strong work ethic—but sometimes the land does not want you. As much as you want to escape into the woods a la transcendentalism, you cannot escape the politics or harshness of your environment. The book cover says “Crafting a Sustainable Rural Life” and ‘sustainable’ to me meant the author’s mission to build a life she could actually keep living. What was unsustainable: indulging in an affair, self-hatred, working around the prejudices of your homophobic neighbors, believing you can control the land when nature is very much so in control.

Long ass review but it was a lovely book to pick up every morning and read through casually!!

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is a lot of beauty in this book but I am absolutely stunned and infuriated about how the author treats drug addition and how little research they bothered to do before broaching the subject. “Maine, it turns out, is a perfect place to be a drug dealer.” I almost threw the book in the trash can.

[Oscar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Figurative points off by virtue of the author being a transplant, but a few half-credits for it being Alaska, and not Massachusetts or California. Thank god.

But I am actually gobsmacked to realize reading this book that everything that happened to Legler has also happened at some point in my 20 years of rural Maine life. Goats perennially escaping. Roosters names Big Red. Making apple cider on a wooden press (although it was the adults who made the kids do that).

And any ragging that I do towards this book is purely the kind of banter that, I guess, siblings would have. It’s reliability made me feel at home in a way unexpected. Hell, Legler literally quoted my favorite stanza from my favorite Marlowe poem (The Passionate Shepard to his Love). I like to think maybe we’d get along…

This is a really vulnerable books in a way I’ve never read before, and in a way that is neither self-flagellating nor completely absolvent of blame, and so insightful as part of that middle ground it’s shocking. Beautiful!

[Nick Haeg · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't learn much from this book. I thought it would be more insightful than it was, and I grew to dislike the author quite a bit throughout the book. She cheats on her partner egregiously and doesn't really acknowledge that she benefits hugely from what is clearly an enormous financial leg up that allows her to buy this huge tract of land in rural Maine to live a life that I envy greatly.

Even though it isn't particularly insightful or educational, the descriptions of rural life and love are enjoyable and were often amusing.

[Donna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five stars not just because I know Gretchen personally, but because this is such an endearing portrait of a rural life well lived. Interspersed with the beauty and struggles with nature, are stories of the beauty and struggles with self, relationship, love, longing and belonging. It is a comforting memoir, telling of the community that surrounds the joys and difficulties of farming; knowledgeable neighbors, veterinarians, talented foresters, and helpful friends. It also tells of the community of healers that help us on the path to finding our true physical and spiritual selves; physical therapists, counselors, massage therapists, doctors, ministers, friends, nature. Makes me love Maine all the more!

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was hoping that this memoir would be a bit more about homesteading and a bit less about processing childhood trauma. Even so it probably would have been fine, but I grew utterly exasperated with the author's description of her several years long cycle of cheating on her partner, lying about it, promising she was finally done, sending a desperate text to affair partner, back to cheating, etc. And then by the point where the author discussed her journey to forgive HERSELF for the affair I was totally disgusted. The details of the author's cheating and lying really overshadowed the rest of the book for me and I definitely won't be reading anything else by this author.

[Rina · Rating 2 out of 5]

the style was fine at times, excruciatingly bad at times. the cover is sort of deceiving. i felt that this book was more of an extension of the author’s “therapeutic work” processing her life events, rather than a record about crafting a sustainable rural life. good light reading though.

[celia mcclure-sikkema · Rating 3 out of 5]

i like butch naturalists and i don’t like miseducation and flippancy regarding substance abuse

[andrea · Rating 1 out of 5]

dnfing at page 183 after skimming a lot.

i was hoping for a memoir that read like autofiction. frankly, a lot of the essays in this read like a textbook - very technical and dull information regarding how to slaughter, defeather, and cook chickens or how to stack a woodpile. it wasn't very interesting and felt like a slog.

another thing to note is i really hate gretchen cheating on her partner, the way she justified it in an essay too. i also hate the way she treated her partner in general. at one point, a weasel gets into the hen house and kills all the baby chicks. she tells her partner in the way of, "come here, i've got to show you something" with no warning. her partner is reasonably upset. and gretchen actually writes something like, does loving someone mean i have to protect them from things that could upset them? bitch, yes.

i gave up when she talked about her father's rampant fatphobia and felt the need to really hammer in the point that her dad thinks fat people don't deserve to live.

not a fan of the writing, not a fan of her. i will be on the hunt for another sapphic living off the land utopia book.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not so much a back to the land story as a brave and vulnerable retelling of Legler's perfectly imperfect life, full of mistakes, shortcomings, and healing. A great memoir that gave me a lot to personally reflect on. Poignant and a treat to read!

[Casey · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really expected this to be more pragmatic rather than memoir, let alone so focused on an affair.

[Augusta Stockman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brb moving to the woods with goats and a garden (and a girl). Where friends live down the road to share dinner parties and offer impromptu lessons in acorn harvesting. A beautiful, sweet book.

[Alexia · Rating 3 out of 5]

It wasn't the writing style or the way the book was set up that was the issue with me - it was unfortunately some of the content. It was a book the reflects how one's personal self is connected to the way in which we experience and handle the natural world. There was some content I enjoyed, and other content that rubbed me the wrong way.

[Barb · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started off loving this book. I was taken in by the homesteading life, the charm of their place in Maine, and queers! Women homesteading! I love the Nearings, but it was refreshing to see this life through the eyes of a family like mine.

I got hung up when she started talking about the affair with M. One the one hand, I appreciate her vulnerability and candor to be truthful about this aspect of the story. On the other, it is such a trigger. I was disappointed. My lovely story of two loving women in the Maine woods was spoiled. Or so it felt.

After that, it felt like each chapter was a disjointed tale of some aspect of their lives. The flow and arc of the story was lost. Honestly, I’m not sure if the story lost the flow or I did.

In the end, a book that started at a 5 for me landed at a 3.5. That said I’m going to take a look at the Antarctica book by the same author. I love books about this place and I also enjoyed her writing.

[Kit Corcoran · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would give this a 3 star rating, but the last essay changed my mind and brought out my gentle forgiving nature. There were several essays in this collection that I loved and was initially interested in this book for, but then there were also several essays that I wasn’t expecting to read and were not very happy with (considering there weren’t any trigger warnings or mentions of such stories from what Little information the back of the book offers), mainly the detailed accounts of family trauma and musings about death and accounts of affairs. I was here for the farm life and the woods and nature and got a lot of human nature thrown into the mix. Perhaps it is unfair of me to want to keep those things separate considering that nature is my own personal escape and healing center from my own family and life traumas. For that last essay I give an extra star as a way to show that I understand that it’s all tied in together and nothing about life can truly be untangled from each other. Life is messy and nobody is perfect, and just because I don’t like something doesn’t mean it is not necessary.

[KCelery · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a stunning book. The cover is gorgeous, the illustrations are lovely and fun, and the writing itself is catches the heart with its straightforward down to earth details and descriptions blended with lyricism and insight into rural life and partnerships. Partnerships with the earth, the animals -domestic and wild- and life partnerships strengthened by shared goals, hardships, and joyous moments. I stopped reading in between each essay to pause and sit with the message. The essay “Wealth” brought me back to my Farmington years and memories of an afternoon spent with Mr. Fenton. Woodsqueer is absolutely worth the read. I hugged the book when I finished reading.

[Hannah Evelyn · Rating 1 out of 5]

I started this book thinking it would be about nature, sustainability, natural living, etc. What I got instead was a memoir entwined with a few tales of living and creating a homestead, but next to that every chapter mentioned the woman the author had an affair with. I skipped through pages, breezed over chapters, and I began to really dislike the author as a person. It is not my place to judge so I will not elaborate further. The cover is beautiful, the drawings inside adorable. But I wanted to be done with this book.

[Laura Julier · Rating 3 out of 5]

A memoir about, as the subtitle says, crafting a sustainable rural life in western Maine, structured as a series of essays that take up variously issues of precisely that, crafting a sustainable rural life, alternating at times with more self focused pieces. She begins with more narrative pieces that I suspect are aimed at setting the stage, almost entirely written in a voice that is distant by past tense: we would do X, Y would happen. There’s a lot of emotional distance in the beginning part of the book, but as other readers have noted, it gets stronger. Once the book takes up the issue of her affair, there is much more introspection, reflection, present tense, and an immediately and openness that is much more engaging.

Full disclosure: I was the editor of Fourth Genre, the literary magazine in which the piece “Foragers” was first published. And it turns out, that is one of the strongest pieces in the book. in the end, this is an extremely satisfying book, full of complicated emotion from which Legler does not shy away, and as such is, in the end, a very satisfying read. The last piece, especially is quite beautiful and moving, such that you close the book after finishing it with a sense that all is healed and healable in the world.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

At turns whimsical, serious, humorous, saddening, and intriguing, Legler's memoir-like account of her life with her wife on their small working farm in rural Maine contains a host of fascinating and thought-provoking stories. Addressing themes as varied as property rights, animal husbandry, a domestic subsistence economy, hunting, attunement to nature, and the emotional travails of a long-term relationship, this book portrays the remarkable complexity of both a single human life and the ecosystem that supports it. Legler's writing manages to both extol and avoid romanticizing the simplicities of rural life, whether describing both the comfort of winter heat from a wood-burning stove and the labor of managing a woodlot, or portraying one's close relationships with farm animals that one will ultimately slaughter for food. Without glossing over the dark threads of prejudice, isolation, and danger that exist in rural life, Legler presents an inspiring account of living closer to the land and the nourishment that it provides, and being more reliant on one's own work, one's partner, the goodwill of one's neighbors, and the natural environment that supports it all.

[Henry T. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Legler's account of living with her partner, Ruth, in the Maine woods covers a lot of ground, literally and figuratively. She tells of prosaic experiences involved in managing a rural life: raising goats, harvesting wood for the winter, and tending to gardens, apple trees, and chickens. She also tells deeply personal stories, sparked by these experiences: stories of her father, her childhood love of animals, her grandmother's dairy farm. But the most emotionally laden story that weaves through the book involves her relationship with Ruth and Legler's affair with another women. It's a complicated story and sometimes the book seems more interested in analyzing a tortuous passion than describing the joys and dramas of a rural life.

In the end, I enjoyed the book because it did include all those stories--the ones about the outer landscape as well as those about her inner world. It's a good read.

[Sarah Koppelkam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hayley and I picked up this book in a small town in Maine, and it was a delight to read this local author's chronicle of her life in rural Maine. I found I related to a lot of her reflected about being a visible lesbian in a place where you're not sure you belong (and are often surprised that no one cares), and it was timely as we've just bought our own house with a massive, slightly overwhelming garden. Legler was quite vulnerable in sharing about her affair and longterm partnership, and admirably wove those personal anecdotes into vignettes about nature, sustainability, and wildlife.

[Kelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book! Didn't want it to end. Such rich descriptions and reflections on Gretchen's life in rural Maine and such honesty about her childhood, this book taught me just as much about the human spirit as it did about nature. What I loved most about this book is the author's ability to be raw, open and honest, ask questions, and be vulnerable. Did not expect to like it as much as I did. A MUST read!

[Cynthia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I mostly enjoyed the parts of this about her rural life, although I have questions about how she finds time for all of it while also being a professor (her actual job is basically absent from the book). However, a LOT of this book is about the aftermath of her having an affair, which for sort of obvious reasons (she's still married to the partner she cheated on) is not described in much depth - but given the absence of detail, the writing about it feels very vague and distant.

[Brenda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book so much!

As a person who has lived in a huge city her entire life, I've found the concept of having an actual farm very intriguing. Gretchen opened the window to that world with all its raw beauty. She writes about the brutality of killing a chicken, and the pride that comes when the first carrot sprouts on your garden in spring.

After reading this book I'll come back to Maine with renewed respect for nature, and a little bit less afraid.

[Alyssa · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Is there anything more perfect than an acorn with its jaunty beret, its burnished shell so much like the shape of a human face--wide at the forehead, tapering down to an excellent chin?"

Wanted to like this one, and at points did, but I think the fact that it took me 2 months to read is a pretty good indicator of my waning interest. I didn't know it was going to be a memoir, but that actually probably made it more interesting than if it were just a guide to homesteading, as I thought it would be.

[Danielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful memoir about learning to live off the land and lesbian identity and partnership. There was not a single chapter that I did not enjoy. I know a number of people who would love this book tremendously, and I’ll be recommending it to them.

[Jana Fritz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Giving this book a 3.5. The reflections on being queer in rural Maine and living off the land were perspective-bringing. I didn’t love the book’s flow. Some of the descriptions and thread throughout the story fell short for me.

[Andi_banandi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading about her experiences with her relationships and adventures homesteading. It gave me some philosophical ponderings too--like "God only makes perfect things" and the pear analogy that every pear perfectly fulfills its purpose.

[anarcho-lesbian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now that’s how you write a book. This was a beautiful exploration of life and death, lesbian love and acceptance, and rural living. May be a new all-time favorite and definitely a favorite of the year!