by Jean Craighead George

ages: 10+

First sentence: “I am on my mountain in a tree home that people have passed without ever knowing I am here.”

Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

I’ve seen this book around for years, and known that I should read it. I didn’t really know what it was about, just that it was on lists of books by people I respect. That, and I’ve enjoyed George’s other stuff.

I’m quite glad I read it, though.

The basic plot for those of you (like me) hiding under a rock: teenage Sam Gribly is incredibly happy living in New York City. And so one day he decides to up and run away to the Catskills mountains to live on a piece of land that has been in the family (but unused) for decades. No one believes he can do it, and yet he not only does, he flourishes. He makes a house out of a tree, learns to trap animals and hunt and skin deer (using every bit of the animal). He raises and trains a falcon. He learns to live with silence and learn the language of the forest.

It’s a simple book, in so many ways. There’s not much going on plot-wise; it’s essentially a wildlife handbook of how Sam managed to make it work in the wilderness. And it’s a simple life he leads: he gets up, he forages for food, he stores for the winter, he swims and fishes, he walks and explores. There’s no rush, there’s no stress, there’s no rat-race. It’s a wonderfully idyllic life.

The thing that I found most interesting, however, was how much Sam learned from books. He kept saying things like, “I read in a book somewhere that” and “the book I read said that”. They really are useful things, books. It also made me quite sad that no one could up and do what Sam did today. It’s not just that there are no places to run to (or that anyone would actually let a teenage boy run away to the wild without calling the authorities), but that a lot of the knowledge in the book is lost. For some reason — and I find this strange, considering that I’m basically a city girl — I find this sad.

Thankfully we have books like these to remind us of simpler times and places.