"Wallace Kaufman is a splendid storyteller and a thoughtful social critic-wise, honest, and consistently funny." -Robert Finch "An absorbing, unflinching, and surprisingly comic account of how one man-a devoted father-withdrew from the world and gradually returned. It's as wise and instructive as it is compelling."-Reynolds Price In 1974 Wallace Kaufman, following the romantic vision of a simpler life in harmony with nature he first glimpsed in Thoreau's Walden, moved on to his own land by a small stream in the North Carolina woods. Now, twenty-five years later, he emerges to tell a tale somewhat different from Thoreau's-an entertaining, moving, and distinctly late-twentieth-century story of a life lived in the wild as landowner, environmentally conscious developer, builder, farmer, conservationist, wilderness steward. His love of nature and his commitment to preserving it never waver, even as he tells his sometimes hilarious, sometimes catastrophic stories of how to live with nature even when nature isn't too keen on living with you.