Synopses & Reviews
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.
Try to imagine Thoreau married, with a job, three kids, and a minivan. This is the serious yet irreverent sensibility that suffuses Cabin Fever, as the author seeks to apply the hermit-philosopher’s insights to a busy modern life.
Tom Montgomery Fate lives in a Chicago suburb, where he is a husband, father, professor, and active member of his community. He also lives in a cabin built with the help of friends in the Michigan woods, where he walks by the river, chops wood, and reads Thoreau by candle light.
While he divides his time between suburbia and the cabin, Fate’s point is not to draw a line between the two but to ask what each has to say about the other. How do we balance nature (picking blackberries) with technology (tapping BlackBerrys)? What is revealed about human boundaries when a coyote wanders into a Quiznos? Can a cardinal protecting chicks from a hungry cat teach us anything about instincts and parenting? Fate seeks a more attentive, deliberate way of seeing the world and our place in it, not only among the trees and birds but also in the context of our relationships and society.
A seasonal nature memoir, Cabin Fever takes readers on a search for the wild both in the woods and within ourselves. Although we are often estranged from nature in our daily lives, Fate shows that we can recover our kinship with the earth and its other inhabitants if we are willing to pay attention.
In his exploration of how we are to live “a more deliberate life” amid a high-tech, material world, Fate invites readers into an interrogation of their own lives, and into a new kind of vision: the possibility of enough in a culture of more.
From the Hardcover edition.
Synopsis
Cabin Fever might be described as a modern
Walden, if you can imagine Thoreau married, with a job, three kids, and a minivan. A seasonal memoir written alternately from a little cabin in the Michigan woods and a house in suburban Chicago, the book engages readers in a serious yet irreverent conversation about Thoreau's relevance in the modern age.
The author 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 Fate spends half his time at the cabin, this is no world-renouncing, back-to-nature paean. Unlike Thoreau during his Walden years, he balances his solitude with full engagement in family and civic life.
Fate's writing reflects this balancing of nature and family in stories such as "The Confused Cardinal," in which a male cardinal feeds chicks of another species and leads to a reflection on parenting; "In the Time of Cicadas," which juxtaposes his wife's hysterectomy with the burgeoning fecundity of the seventeen-year cicadas coming out to mate; and in a beautiful essay reminiscent of E. B. White's "Once More to the Lake," in which Fate takes his son to the same cabin his father took him as a child.
In his exploration of how we are to live "a more deliberate life" amid a high-tech, materialist culture, Fate invites readers into an interrogation of their own lives, and into a new kind of vision: the possibility of enough in a culture of more.
Synopsis
“If Tom Montgomery Fate has not found the secret formula for the deliberate, balanced life, he is a chief disciple of the search.”—Chicago Tribune
Try to imagine Thoreau married, with a job, three kids, and a minivan. This is the sensibility—serious yet irreverent—that suffuses Cabin Fever, as the author seeks to apply the hermit-philosopher’s insights to a busy modern life. Tom Montgomery Fate lives in a Chicago suburb, where he is a husband, father, professor, and active member of his community. He also lives in a cabin built with the help of friends in the Michigan woods, where he walks by the river, chops wood, and reads Thoreau by candlelight. Fate seeks a more attentive, deliberate way of seeing the world and our place in it, not only in the woods but also in the context of our relationships and society. In his search for “a more deliberate life” amid a high-tech, material world, Fate invites readers into an interrogation of their own lives, and into a new kind of vision: the possibility of enough in a culture of more.
About the Author
Tom Montgomery Fate is the author of four books, including the collection of essaysBeyond 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.
Table of Contents
Author’s Note
Deliberate Life A Search for Balance
Spring
Chapter 1 Picking Blackberries Nature and Technology
Chapter 2 In Plain Sight Vision and Revision
Chapter 3 Fathers Watching Sons Windows and Mirrors
Chapter 4 Saunter Reason and Instinct
Chapter 5 The Gay Cardinal Love and Instinct
Summer
Chapter 6 Cabin Fever Alone and Lonely
Chapter 7 In the Time of the Cicada Patience and Passion
Chapter 8 Mushrooms Love and Sex
Chapter 9 Lake Glass Childhood and Parenthood
Chapter 10 A Box of Wind Nature and Religion
Autumn
Chapter 11 Trimming Trees Self-Reliance and Self-Destruction
Chapter 12 Constructing Truth Wood and Word
Chapter 13 Falling Apart Death and Birth
Chapter 14 Coyotes at the Mall Predators and Prey
Chapter 15 The Art of Dying Art and Activism
Chapter 16 Cougars in the Corn Facts and Truths
Winter
Chapter 17 A Familiar Darkness Desperation and Deliberation
Chapter 18 Traveling at Night Seers and Seekers
Chapter 19 Slow Pilgrim Walking and Praying
Acknowledgments
Notes
Credits