Living on Wilderness Time

by Melissa Walker and Melissa Graves Walker

Book Overview

Melissa Walker set out on a journey that many women of her generation have mapped only in their dreams. Like many American chroniclers before her who have surrendered to the aimless pleasures of the road, Walker had no geographical destination in mind, but she did have two definite goals--one personal, one political--for her journey. She was looking for the peace and solitude of the backcountry, certainly, but she also wanted to learn the dynamics...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0813921090
• ISBN13: 9780813921099
• Release Date: September 2002
• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.19 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.0" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

I LOVE this Book!

I actually learned of this book from the author on a rainy Georgia afternoon while touring her beautiful backyard garden which was part of a local tour. She and her husband Jerome were so interesting and kind to me and my tour buddy whom I also just met that day! This all proves once again, there are no accidents. After our garden tour, Jerome led us on a tour of his photography gallery. He explained that he took the stunning pictures when he joined Melissa several times out on her wilderness adventure. The sights were spectacular. Since I had traveled by car/van out west myself in my 20's and 30's, I was curious about a 50 year old gal out on her own in a tent! Immediately on returning home I ordered the book. I could hardly put it down! WOW, did she have some amazing experiences out there! Melissa is descriptive in the scenery, the people she meets along the way and her personal feelings and challenges while touring our nations wilderness country alone . . . and with a few new found friends from the trails. As a woman who's recently turned 50, I can relate to her own life curiosities of wanting to make a difference in our country. The fact that she actually made the quest on her own, and lived to tell the tale is so inspiring! Her travels make it seem possible that I too could pack up my CRV and hit the road again with a more deliberate purpose and find my own calm inner spirit by becoming one with our Motherland. This would make a great gift book for any woman who is at, or is reaching, that middle age point of life re-evaluation and personal self discovery. It's a book you'll cherish if you love the out of doors, animals, big skys and peeing in the middle of the wide open spaces! Her personal humor is a blast! Buy it, read it, share it with others! I feel blessed to have met Melissa and Jerome. They are now a part of my life journey!

Made me get off my bum

Melissa Walker was 51 in 1993 when she realized she needed to "go to the wilderness." She suffered from "hurry sickness." Having raised two children and been a college professor for 20 years, her life was crammed full, jam-packed, harried and hectic. Walker decided to learn about the preservation of wild places, and to do so, she did what so many of us dream of - she packed up, hit the road and DID IT. She writes, "In 1993 I took off from home on the first of three solitary trips extending over a 15-month period and totaling more than 200 days. Living on Wilderness Time grew out of events during that time." Although Ms. Walker is brutally honest about the aching desperation one must feel for our earth, there is inspiration here for all of us. I, for one, not only feel it's my obligation to begin educating myself about channels for DOING something to help Mother Earth, but I am excited about it. I may not be able to live in the wilderness for 200 days, but I can certainly learn from Melissa Walker's wilderness experiences. And who knows? I may even try to live a little on wilderness time.

A Love Affair with Wilderness

A vivid and delightful description of Walker's 200 days alone in America's wild places. Made me want to go! The reader is treated to intimate details about her adventures in her solo trip through natural wilderness areas. One meets a variety of characters, not all of whom share Walker's desire to preserve the wilderness (and many of whom are surprised to find a middle-aged woman traveling alone and without a gun yet). Highly recommended.

Claiming Herself and the Wilderness

As she approached her fiftieth birthday, author Melissa Walker found herself hostage to "hurry sickness," the halfhearted race to meet the demands of job, family, household, and friends. To reclaim her own life and authentic purpose, Walker sought out the wild places of this country in order to try living instead according to the natural world's rhythms of day and season. What began through a lifelong love of nature and a midlife urgency to reevalaute her personal life and priorities led Walker on a larger journey to a new purpose: claiming the American wilderness as her own cause and becoming an important voice in its preservation.Living On Wilderness Time combines the best features of travel writing, the personal memoir, and a call to action. Along the way it is populated with fascinating people and wild places in the American West and the South. The interior landscape is as intriguing as the external world, as Walker must balance her zeal for exploring and saving wild places with the sudden inclination, for instance, to shop for a Chanel blush. Walker's writing is clear and spare, with flashes of insight and wit and steady good humor. One is somehow changed by reading the book, both through new understanding of the power of the wilderness, and new respect for the passionate work that people who dare to venture outside the fog and clutter of daily life can summon themselves to do.

Preserving our Wild Places, Including the Ones Inside Us

Breathes there a woman with soul so dead, who never to herself hath said . . . "I gotta get outta here!" Melissa Walker is one lady who knows how to live her dream. Burning with a desire to explore the wild places designated by the Wilderness Act of 1964, Walker leaves her comfortable home in Atlanta, and her understanding husband of 30 years, to set forth on a journey of adventure. Without a companion, without even a dog for protection, she chose to spend her time in the wilderness alone. Was it worth it? Listen to this: Surprised by a snowstorm in Arizona, afraid her tent is going to blow away with her in it, Walker crawls into her sleeping bag wearing all the clothes she has brought along. But at 3:00 am she has to use the pit toilet 50 yards away. She crawls out of the tent to find that the sky has cleared, revealing more stars than she's ever seen in her life. "I'd left home expecting to find warm days, cool nights, and a desert in bloom. Instead I found this last blast of winter, a snow-covered landscape with a view of the universe so clear that it was difficult to turn my eyes away from the sky. I breathed deeply and felt the cold starlit space rush in. " Make no mistake, Walker is an environmentalist-yet her presentation is balanced. In a designated wilderness, she sees cattle destroying a river bank; yet visiting a well-managed cattle ranch, she sees wildlife of all kinds. Grizzly bears, cougars, moose, and all kinds of human characters populate this book. When Walker's husband Jerome joins her for a week of camping in the Northwest, it's like a vacation and respite from what by then had become her real work - experiencing the wilderness in solitude. What is "wilderness?" Under the law, it is defined as "an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain." The word "visitor" is what creates the paradox in this situation, for among the visitors may be hunters, ranchers, hikers, and foresters themselves, who by "managing" the wilderness, inevitably affect it. I recommend this book as a well-written, often lyrical, memoir, and also for anyone who is interested in nature and in preserving wild places for future generations.