We Took to the Woods

Rich is a very skillful writer and at time humorous. She loved living in the deep woods with her husband and two children even though she has no electricity and no running water. Yes, year round. I love how she organized the book breaking a lot of negative popular stereotypes. This was the first of her book writings and usually considered her best. Few libraries will have this 1942 book so I am glad I bought it. Was used like new. I have talked about it a lot since reading it. One of my all time favorites. She is so skillful.

Big nostalgia. This book was in my parents small library. Among my first early "adult book" reading as a kid.Helps that it is both personal and well written. Reinforced my early innate love of the outdoors.Sadly Louise Dickerson's books are moderately expensive collectors items. She had a good career as the native nature writer. A warm personality. A gradually disappearing legacy.

I was eight years old when Louise Dickinson Rich's thick book appeared, its jacket cover inviting me down a snowy path to a snug home in the pines. It was my first adult book; the fact that Mother was reading it at the same time gave the experience added zip.The book is not a biography, not even a memoir. Instead, in a very informal, conversational style, Rich answers key questions people have asked her about her life as a writer, a wife, and a mother deep in the far north woods of Maine. One question per chapter: "Aren't You Afraid? Don't You Get Bored? How Do You Make A Living?" Her answers are candid, funny, detailed, and enlightening.When, as a young bright college student, Louise had men breathe into her ear, "I NEED you!" she took the avowals with a few grains of salt. But when her husband Ralph comes racing into their snow-wrapped log house with blood dripping down his arm and bellows, "Louise, where ARE you? I need you, goddammit!"--she knows it's stark truth.Rich's backwoods life details an earlier time, of course (the late Thirties), but even in that time, her way of life was an anomaly. "Outsiders" thought her life must be quaint, or picturesque, or outlandish.Rich's no-nonsense approach sweeps these fantasies aside and shows us the reality of, say, making a week's worth of dinners out of three tins of chipped beef and a box of soda crackers. Or dealing with a sudden inflamed appendix when the snow has closed all roads to Outside, but the ice on the lake is too thin to drive across. Or why she enjoys being the preferred partner on the other end of a cross-cut saw. And how you make a satisfying community out of two other families, three heavy-drinking loggers, and a picturesque but comfort-loving sled-dog.I loved this book when I was eight, and again when I was in my twenties. Reading it for the third time now in my seventies (delighted that it was still available at amazon.com), I find it does more than "hold up" as a delightful read; it satisfies as thoroughly as one of Louise's long-simmered deer roasts must have done.

Am old boyhood friend put me onto this book. He became acquainted with the author many years ago and had visited the wild area in northern Maine about which the author writes. I bought a used hardcover copy in good condition, which came promptly.This is the true, fascinating, refreshingly candid, and humorous story about how Louise Dickinson became enamored of living way up in the sticks in northern Maine, married, moved there, raised a family in the early part of the 20th century, came to love their "rough life," and wrote about it.It was very isolated where the Riches lived. There were very few neighbors, and they looked out for one another. In the winter, supplies had to come in either by boat across a lake or by vehicle when the ice on the lake was thick enough. It was a precarious situation when for weeks supplies could not come in either way because of the thin ice. Her husband had to deliver her baby, born a little prematurely, during one of these inaccessible times.Louise Dickinson Rich wrote for a living, and it shows in this book, which is hard to put down. She tells you what was true about life way up in the Maine woods and what (despite what many outsiders think) was not true. Ingenuity was a key to surviving, and she shares a number of the innovations she and her husband came up with. It is all told with her engaging, dry Yankee sense of humor.Louise never (or almost never) looked back on her chosen life, but lived it and loved it to the full. She has written another book on her life in the northern wilds of Maine, which I have ordered and eagerly await.

This classic "back to nature" story has been in print ever since it was published in 1942. I think the main reason for its appeal is that Louise Dickinson Rich's love of the life she was living comes through with every word. She doesn't minimize the difficulties or the hardships, but she faces them all with good grace or sometimes understandable frustration. Her sense of humor and easygoing nature also help her through trials that might defeat some of us. One of the most interesting things I noticed while rereading this after originally reading it probably thirty years or so ago is that living life in the wilderness has not changed significantly since Rich wrote this book, except for the ease of communication. We no longer have to string telephone wires through the trees, we just have to search for a wifi hotspot or a cell phone signal.If you are thinking you'd like to see what it's like to live far away from civilization, or if you just enjoy reading about it, this is the first book I would recommend. There are lots more out there, but this is definitely a classic

Looking forward to reading this book

Oh my god. I've read this book twice already in the space of 4 months. That's how engrossing and enjoyable it is. Down to earth Louise tells us in all the delightful details of her daily life in the elemental woods of Maine. Read it and escape!!!!

Really good to read, funny at times.

it was mainly about cars, roads, water, anything but living in the woods and what it was realy like. I disliked this book as it mislead me in to thinking I would be reading about a cabin, the people etc . it barely touches the subjects.

I like this book but Helen Hoover better!!!