In The Strong Woods: A Season Alone in The North Country by Paul Lehmberg (review)

64 Western American Literature journalist, in true journalistic style he capitalizes on the many fearless adventures of John Muir’s life. He skillfully creates an appropriate and colorful background that highlights each event. Occasionally, in his enthusi­ asm to vividly portray a heroic adventure, he exaggerates to the extent of making the incident unbelievable, as is true in his relating the episode of Rev. S. Hall Young and John Muir on Glenora Peak in Alaska. Mr. Clarke relates an anecdote of Muir’s having had a more than friendly interest in a young woman of Julian, California, a Mary Jane Talley. Some gifts, a scrapbook herbarium and a collage of a woodland scene, that Muir supposedly gave her, were deposited in the San Diego Historical Society by her daughter in 1939. Although the gifts are likely ones that Muir could have given to a girl he liked, the anecdote cannot be accepted as truth until some evidence establishes the fact that Muir was in Julian and spent some time there. To date, the records do not support this. Furthermore, a Muir scholar has examined the writing in the scrapbook, and firmly believes that the writing is not that of John Muir. Mr. Clarke makes the rather common error in referring to the Sierra Nevada as “the Sierras.” The Sierra Nevada range is a single range and not plural as indicated in several instances. In relating Muir’s first visit to Yosemite, the author writes that Muir and his companion camped in the Merced Grove on their way out. Muir and Chilwell came in by way of Coulterville and Crane Flat where they might have camped in the Merced Grove near there, but did not. Actually, they departed by way of Wawona and camped in the Mariposa Grove on their way out to Mariposa. Mr. Clarke spent five years writing the book. The reader will quickly realize that the author is not only a great admirer of Muir, but is also a preservationist dedicated to the ideals for which Muir worked throughout his life, and therefore writes with sympathetic understanding. This book will not be of great interest to the scholarly student because of its discrep­ ancies and also the fact that it is fictionalized to some extent. To the casual reader, however, the biography offers a lively and moving account of our renown naturalist. WILLIAM F. KIMES, Mariposa, California In The Strong Woods: A Season Alone in The North Country. By Paul Lehmberg. (New7York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980. 149 pages, $8.95.) When author Paul Lehmberg chose the title In The Strong Woods, he had in mind the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of strong as “of country: thickly covered with undergrowth.” The northwoods of the Minnesota/Ontario country are so dense that roads in this land are usually water routes: lakes and rivers. It is a land one can easily get lost in. Ironically it is the land in which Mr. Lehmberg chose to find himself. Reviews 65 Having finished his course work for his Ph.D. and not having the energy to begin the dissertation, he also found his marriage at a stalemate. After deliberating a summer’s solitude at a modest wilderness cabin that he and his wife, Suzanne, and two other couples built, Paul chose to leave the desert city of Salt Lake and move to Nym. Do not confuse this book with traditional nature writing. Rather Mr. Lehmberg writes of the nature of man. Most of the book concentrates on the dilemmas of modern man and his decision-making processes, his evaluation of his environment ,and his relationship to it. The author does not write of canoe adventures as the Sigurd Olson reader might anticipate, but most often from his kitchen table at Nym Lake. The text is predominantly meditative rather than descriptive of the land. Occasionally the reader experiences a portage or sees the northern lights. But mostly the northwoods allows Mr. Lehmberg to escape from the desert life of a twentyeight year old student-teacher-husband to reevaluate himself and restore life to his drying shell. Mr. Lehmberg praises housewifery and the menial tasks while alone at his cabin. Through the repetition...