Book and Video Reviews

These are not good times to put out a book on edible wild plants. Unless you’re Samuel Thayer.

When I reviewed Thayer’s first book, The Foragers Harvest, I wrote that it is as good or better than anything available on the topic. It has since become the go-to book for students at the Jack Mountain Bushcraft School. His new book, Nature’s Garden, builds upon the high standard set by The Foragers Harvest and establishes him as the leading authority and author on edible wild plants that has ever published. It isn’t slightly better than other books on the topic; it’s in a whole different league.

The meat of the book is made up of plant accounts. These are in-depth profiles of edible plants, full of photos of how to identify, harvest and use them. The author bases all of his work on personal experience, so there aren’t the usual falsehoods handed down by authors of lesser works. Instead, you get what works, along with anecdotal stories of how the author got to know the individual plants and how he’s used them in the past. His writing style is conversational, and while there is a description for each plant that includes botanical terminology, the author writes it so as to make it accessible to the non-botanist. The numerous photos contribute greatly to aid the neophyte in identifying the individual species. The Harvest And Preparation section for each plant is where the author’s experience really shines. Whereas the Peterson’s Field Guide To Edible Wild Plants will list “starchy root” or similar descriptive term after a plant, Thayer has several pages of highly descriptive how-to information. To use a specific example, most books on edible plants have a sentence or two on acorns. Nature’s Garden has 50 pages.

Anyone who has read The Foragers Harvest would expect the Plant Accounts to be encyclopedic and accessible, full of great photos and useful information. On this point, they deliver. If the book contained just Plant Accounts it would still be a fantastic resource. But there’s more to outdoor living and foraging than how-to, and in the first section of the book the author gives a snapshot into the mind of living with wild foods. With sections on getting started, the ethics of harvesting wild plants, conservation, personal experiences on a wild food diet and a harvest calendar, he provides those new to foraging a great jumping off point. In a section titled Some Thoughts On Wild Food, he offers useful advice such as don’t make a wild plant fit the description in the book (which is a common pitfall), then expounds upon the myth of the instant expert. The last chapter of the section is titled “Poison Plant Fables”, where he discusses the story of Christopher McCandless and how his demise in Alaska, chronicled in the book and movie Into The Wild, didn’t occur as the famous author of his biography would have us believe. He didn’t poison himself by eating the wrong plant. Rather, he starved to death. By pointing out the facts, though, he doesn’t poke fun at McCandless like so many armchair survivalists like to do. Instead, he treats him with respect, saving his derision for the authors and movie producers for not telling the truth. The money quote from this section comes in a section titled “What Lessons About Wilderness Survival And Wild Food Can Be Drawn From The Story Of Chris McCandless?”

In a short term survival situation, food is of minor importance. However, in long term survival or “living off the land”, it is of paramount importance.

Bushcraft continues to evolve for me away from skills and toward personal relationships with the land and people. While I’ve never met Samual Thayer, after reading this first section I feel that we’re kindred spirits.

There isn’t a better book on edible wild plants. Taken together with The Foragers Harvest, it is the last word on the topic in print. I don’t think more can be learned from any book; to go beyond what Thayer has written, you have to be out there actively foraging.

Visit Samuel Thayer’s website: foragersharvest.com/

Check out Nature’s Garden on Amazon.com.

I just finished Tony Nester’s new book The Modern Hunter-Gatherer; A Practical Guide To Living Off The Land. If you don’t like reading book reviews, here’s the abbreviated version; It’s great, get a copy, read it twice.

As the title suggests, it’s a primer for those looking to supplement their diet with wild fish, game and edible wild plants. Unlike the countless books available on hunting and fishing, the focus of this book is for the person looking to for food, not sport.

Most of the information in print and on the web dealing with this topic is, in my opinion, complete crap. It is usually either cribbed from fifty-year-old military manuals, or is the product of people with maximal imaginations and minimal field experience. In the first chapter there are sections on “The Challenge Of Living Off The Land” and “The Realities Of Living Off The Land” that put all of the often repeated-fallacies to bed. I’ve discussed parts of what is covered in these two sections hundreds of times, although never as well thought out as Tony has written, and am excited to finally have a reference on the topic I can point people to.

The remainder of the book is practical advice on hunting, fishing, trapping and foraging for edible wild plants. There’s nothing fancy about his approach, and thats what makes it so refreshing and useful. Instead of diagramming 50 traps, he covers three; one of which you won’t find in any other book in print, and no other survival manual that I’ve seen, which is one of my personal favorites; a log deadfall from the boreal forest.

Tony is an experienced instructor who is well-respected by his peers, and this comes through in the book by not filling page after page with facts and trivia in order to impress the reader with how much he knows. Instead, he writes what is necessary for the reader to understand the topic. As anyone who has tried to learn how to do something from a book will attest, more details often make it harder to pick up. While there is a three-section appendix with lots of details, the text isn’t bogged-down with extraneous minutia. The material is clearly written with the beginner in mind, but even the seasoned outdoors-person will pick up tips and tricks Tony has distilled from his two decades of teaching survival courses.

My only reservation about the book is a photo of an improvised fishing rig (on page 46) made with a soda can. After a vast amount of field research with this technique, I’ve found that the fish bite better when the can used is a 16 oz. can of the cheapest beer available.

All in all, it’s a great book and will become a required text at the Jack Mountain Bushcraft School. If you’re interested in what it really takes to subsist in the bush for an extended period, get a copy and read it five times.

Link to the book on Amazon

Link to the book on Tony’s website, Ancient Pathways Outdoor Survival School

From the back cover:

Have you ever wondered how to walk into the wilderness and harvest your own food? Are you interested in integrating healthy, wild plants into your diet while reducing food costs? Do you want to learn the time-tested methods for living off the land in case you become stranded in the wilds or face an emergency where the grocery shelves are empty?

In his fourth book, survival instructor Tony Nester delves into practical methods that he has applied on extended survival courses over the past twenty years showing the best techniques for beginning and advanced students of wilderness living. This innovative book illustrates, with detailed photos, the essential methods for harvesting, preserving, and cooking small game, fish, edible plants, and how to reduce your dependence on “the system.”

Recapture the excitement of wandering on the land unencumbered while depending on nature’s resources and the skill in your hands.

You will learn how to:
– Realistically obtain wild foods from the land as a beginning hunter-gatherer.
– Select a survival firearm for hunting and why small game is the answer to feeding yourself in the wilds.
– Put together a low-tech but quality fishing kit for catching easy-to-obtain panfish
- Carve, set and utilize traps that actually work in a survival situation and can keep your family fed in a long-term emergency.
– Make delicious jerky and preserve meat the old-fashioned way.
– Harvest and prepare edible plants found in your own neighborhood.

I enjoy reading about aspects of history that are little known – especially with regard to exploration.  Fittingly, I recently started reading a book I got at the library by Gavin Menzies called 1421: The Year The Chinese Discovered America.  In it the author discusses the Chinese treasure fleets and how they explored the globe before Columbus crossed the Atlantic, only to have the records of their journeys destroyed by the royal court.

After getting a few chapters in, I realized that the ideas put forth by the author were grand in scope.  Wondering why I hadn’t heard of them before, I read some reviews of the book at Amazon, and a common response by people more versed in Chinese history than me was that it’s a great story, but it just isn’t true.  Or maybe it could be true, but the author offers little evidence to support his claims.

There are great similarities between this and the world of outdoor survival books.  There some great books on practical wilderness survival, but these don’t sell as well as those with grand stories that are either made-up or can’t be confirmed.  We all love a good story, and the bolder it is, the better it usually spreads or sells.  An example would be Joseph Knowles in his book Alone In The Wilderness, where he supposedly spent two months living in the woods of northern Maine in the early 1900′s.  The book made him a star, but it turned out that it just wasn’t true.  He had spent most of that time at a well-stocked cabin.  But it’s still a great book, and a compelling story (and available online for free).

There are several modern books on survival that mix mystical and spiritual elements into stories about living in the woods that are very popular, providing their authors with disciple-like followings.  But as loyal as these fans are, it doesn’t change the fact that it simply isn’t true, or at least can’t be proven.

The point of this post is that while we all love a good story, don’t accept the imagination of an author as fact without evidence.

Friluftsliv (pronounced: free-looft-sleev) literally means “free-air-life”, and is translated by Roger and Sarah Isberg for their book as “simple life.”  Originally written in Swedish,  it was published and reprinted three times there before being expanded and translated to English.

Here’s an explanation of the term by Roger from the introduction;

It defines the philosophy and pedagogical approach I used in Sweden for 25 years, teaching at Sjovik Folk College and training backcountry mentors in a form of outdoor life that uses simple, traditional wilderness skills, crafts, and knowledge.

Those of us who eschew the adventure and high-tech approach to outdoor living and focus on the traditional skills and knowledge seldom find books by kindred spirits, but this is one of those books.  The Swedish approach described in the book seeks to filter out the excess gear and clutter which distract us from the experience of outdoor living, much like the bushcraft and guide training programs we’ve been running for ten years.

Reading it has been a breath of fresh air.  If you’re involved with outdoor education or leading trips in the back country it will give you much to think about.  I recommend it highly.

Check it out at Amazon and at Trafford Publishing.