A Wild, Rank Place: One Year on Cape Cod

by David Gessner

Cape Cod, that sandy, wind-swept enchantress, has captivated many writers, among them Henry David Thoreau, whose descriptions of that "wild, rank place" have fired the imaginations of not one but many generations. Among Thoreau's literary progeny is David Gessner, but this book goes far beyond the naturalist's focus on the transcendent beauty of the landscape. Rather, Gessner combines his deeply felt sense of place with observations of the Cape's people and with insights about his family, himself, and his art. In a series of interconnected personal essays, he explores his response to his own recently cured cancer and to the lung cancer that is killing his father. Issues of life and death intertwine with images of a land that Gessner finds curiously "Here thoughts are swamped by the smells, sounds, and sights of place. The gentle hypnotic lapping of waves. A prehistoric cormorant on a slick black rock. The delicate lacework of sea grass roots breaking down through a ledge of sand."

Gessner's introspection during a year spent writing in the family's weathered cottage portrays another struggle, too. For a young writer just beginning his career, such mighty literary forebears as Thoreau can be imposing, if not paralyzing. Yet the process of sorting through and making peace with the memories of his genetic father gives Gessner the power to declare artistic independence from his literary one. Seeing "something tremendously heroic" about his father's determination to perform mundane tasks in the face of imminent death brings Gessner to realize that "our minds have minds of their own. Reality is fabulous, yes, but we also crave something more. Symbol, perhaps. Meaning." In the end, what Cape Cod comes to mean for Gessner is not just freedom from the past, but love and nobility in the face of death.

Genres: Nature, Nonfiction, Ecology

149 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1997

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

[Numidica · Rating 4 out of 5]

I met David Gessner about two months ago at a talk he was giving about his latest book, A Traveler's Guide to the End of the World. Gratis books were available to attendees like me, and I mentioned that I had already read his latest, so he offered me a copy of his book about Cape Cod, which is also a book about his father's illness and death.

I found that the book got stronger as it went along. The early bits about the Cape and its people and natural beauty are a picture frozen in time, but still interesting. His invocation of Thoreau, and Thoreau's words from Walden and from his short book about Cape Cod was engaging, and his use of the Thoreau theme grew on me. Anyone who has experienced the death of a parent or loved one from cancer will recognize and empathize with David's journey in the months of his dad's decline.

In short, I enjoyed this slim volume.

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

While David Gessner lived on Cape Cod he had to deal with cancer issues in his family, and it was tough. It made him see the Cape in new insightful ways. (There is an excellent chapter about Thoreau's time on Cape Cod.)

[Erich H. · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5/5

Enjoyed the last essay more than any other. So much Thoreau/Abbey-worship otherwise, the rest felt as if I'd read it a hundred times before. Not necessarily the fault of the author, more my fault for continuing to read "nature" themed books/essays written by mostly white men.

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author redeemed the book for me somewhat by observing that he might be moving out of an extended adolescence, as that's how it read. My feeling is this is a far more important work for the writer than the reader - something he just had to do - and so it is a honest book if only because he is wracked with so much self doubt and suspicion of his own motives. And of course there's lots he's not telling, but that's ok too. And I'm pretty much the same age as him, and recognise bits of my past self in him...

I feel his pain over the gentrification and development of his home landscape. I chuckled at his acerbic views on drumming-in-the-forest man. I wondered at his relationship with women. I was jealous he had such a marvelous place he could call home.

I won't be returning to this book ever I think, but I will go off now and read one of his later books (its a strange thing - at the moment I think of him as a thirty year old, and it is a bit of a shock to realise he is in his fifties now