Cabin fever a suburban father's search for the wild

"A modern Walden--if Thoreau had had three kids and a minivan--Cabin Fever is a serious yet irreverent take on living in a cabin in the woods while also living within our high-tech, materialist culture. Tom Montgomery Fate turns Thoreau's immortal statement "I went to the woods becaus...

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Main Author: Montgomery-Fate, Tom
Format: Books Print Book
Language: English
Published: Boston, Mass. : Beacon Press, 2011.
Subjects:
Summary: "A modern Walden--if Thoreau had had three kids and a minivan--Cabin Fever is a serious yet irreverent take on living in a cabin in the woods while also living within our high-tech, materialist culture. Tom Montgomery Fate turns Thoreau's immortal statement "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately" on its head with the phrase, "I got married and had children because I wished to live deliberately." Though he spends half his time at a cabin in the woods, the author issues no world-renouncing, back-to-nature paean. Fate, unlike Thoreau, balances his solitude with full engagement in family and civic life, and cultivates mindfulnesss in both worlds. Through stories such as "The Confused Cardinal," in which a male bird feeding chicks of another species leads the author to reflect on parenting, and "In the Time of Cicadas," which juxtaposes his wife's hysterectomy with the burgeoning fecundity of seventeen-year cicadas, Fate explores how to live "a more deliberate life" amid a high-tech material culture and invites readers to consider the possibility of enough in a culture of more"-- Provided by publisher.
"Cabin Fever is "Thoreau applied" to the 21st century -- a suburban father's honest exploration of how to live a more deliberate and attentive life within a high-tech, material culture"-- Provided by publisher.
Physical Description: xv, 207 p. ; 22 cm.
ISBN: 9780807000960 (hardback)
0807000965 (hardback)
Author Notes: Tom Montgomery Fate  is the author of four books, including the collection of essays Beyond the White Noise  and the spiritual memoir  Steady and Trembling.  His essays have appeared in the  Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, Orion, Iowa Review, Fourth Genre, Christian Century,  and many other publications, and they often air on NPR's  Living On Earth  and Chicago Public Radio. He is a professor of English at College of DuPage in Illinois, where he  lives with his family. His cabin is in southwest Michigan.