After a long absence from his native southern Appalachians, Thomas Rain Crowe returned to live alone deep in the North Carolina woods. This is Crowe’s chronicle of that time when, for four years, he survived by his own hand without electricity, plumbing, modern-day transportation, or regular income. It is a Walden for today, paced to nature’s rhythms and cycles and filled with a wisdom one gains only through the pursuit of a consciously simple, spiritual, environmentally responsible life. Crowe made his home in a small cabin he had helped to build years before—at a restless age when he could not have imagined that the place would one day call him back. The cabin sat on what was once the farm of an old mountain man named Zoro Guice. As we absorb Crowe’s sharp observations on southern Appalachian natural history, we also come to know Zoro and the other singular folk who showed Crowe the mountain ways that would see him through those four years. Crowe writes of many things: digging a root cellar, being a good listener, gathering wood, living in the moment, tending a mountain garden. He explores profound questions on wilderness, self-sufficiency, urban growth, and ecological overload. Yet we are never burdened by their weight but rather enriched by his thoughtfulness and delighted by his storytelling.

Poetry. Anthology. FAMILY MATTERS contains over 150 fine poems of families dealing with: Birth, Children, Couples, Parenting, Family Portraits, Family Life, Aging & Death. Featuring 100 poets, including: Robert Frost, Denise Levertov, Kenneth Patchen, Louise Bogan, Muriel Rukeyser, Galway Kinnell, James Wright, William Carlos Williams, Theodore Roethke, Li-Young Lee, Antler, Joy Harjo, Maggie Anderson, David Ray, Daryl Ngee Chinn, Jim Daniels, Gary Soto, Richard Garcia, Vivian Shipley, Irene McKinney, Hershman John, Peter Meinke, Lynn Powell, Susan Terris, Ron Wallace, Toshi Washizu, and 80 more

Your students and users will find biographical information on approximately 300 modern writers in this volume of Contemporary Authors(R). Authors in this volume include: Diane Arbus Nina Kiriki Hoffman Michael Moore