This book will be many things to many readers. Offerman, an actor, author, woodworker and comedian, uses this work to point readers towards authors he particularly admires and whose work inspired this book.
It was Wendell Berry, an American author and activist, who verbally challenged Offerman to get out in nature and study its conservation through the lens of another writer, Aldo Leopold, a naturalist, scientist, ecologist, forester, conservationist and environmentalist. Berry’s and Leopold’s writings are the framework of this three-part memoir, with Offerman setting out to write a book about the US population’s general lack of any intimate knowledge of nature. Supporting an agrarian philosophy, he wanted to remind people that if they liked to eat food, then they should be concerned about farmers and agriculture.
So while he writes about hiking and rafting in a Montana national park with two friends, visiting Rebanks’ farm in the UK, and driving through several US states with his wife with their Airstream caravan, he also vents about his country’s politics, racism, gun laws and passion for profit, and even explores sibling dynamics in his own family, particularly in these times of COVID-19.
While his opinions are strong, these lengthy asides are not quite a polemic, as Offerman is clear-sighted enough to see ‘nuance’, one of his favourite words, in almost everything. His intention to show the importance of understanding nature underlies most of his writing and, while this original purpose was laudable, it may become lost in the extraneous themes.
Reviewed by Jennifer Somerville
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nick Offerman is an actor, author, humorist, proprietor of a charismatic woodshop, and proud husband and dishwasher to the world’s most powerful woman – Megan Mullally.
As an actor and producer, he is known for Parks and Recreation (2009), The Founder (2016), 21 Jump Street (2012), 22 Jump Street (2014), We Are The Millers (2013), and Fargo (2014). He has been married to Megan Mullally since September 20, 2003.
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