We Took to the Woods by Louise Dickinson Rich

We Took to the Woods by Louise Dickinson Rich

This book came out in 1942 (a 2007 reprint), and the subtitle is Simple Ideas For Small Outdoor Spaces.

Louise Dickinson Rich (14 June 1903 - 9 April 1991) was a writer known for fiction and nonfiction works about the New England region of the United States, particularly Massachusetts and Maine. This autobiographical book was her first and is regarded as her most famous and well-known work.

Louise once wrote, 

I feel displaced in towns and cities; although have never found myself in an uninhabited place where I did not at once feel perfectly at home.

We Took to the Woods is set in the 1930s when she and her husband Ralph, and her friend and hired help Gerrish, lived in a remote cabin near Umbagog Lake. It was described as "a witty account of Thoreau-like existence in a wilderness home."

In a 1942 review of the book in The Boston Globe, the story of how Louise met her husband Ralph came to light.

[Louise] taught school. She went on a holiday canoe trip to Maine and saw a man cutting wood. He saw her, too, for he asked the girls to stay and eat. Wasn't it lucky the wood lasted that long, for that is how Miss Dickinson met Mr. Rich.

Back in Massachusetts, she couldn't bear the distance between them. Neither could he, and pretty soon she was married and setting up housekeeping in a neighborhood of deer and bear and wildcats, a clearing on the Rapid River,
a carry between two lakes. The nearest community is Middle Dam, five miles away.

A 1987 review of We Took to the Woods shared the daily life of Louise and her younger sister Alice,

When other girls were spending cold winter afternoons stewing in the house, we were down at the pond skating, or out in the woods tracking rabbits ...or on hot summer afternoons, we were in the sun-drenched fields or shadowy woods, looking, listening, tasting, smelling.

[To be part of the natural world is] a thousand times more thrilling and beautiful than watching the most elaborate man-made spectacle on the biggest stage in the world.

A 1942 review in the Hattiesburg American revealed

[Louise] (who speaks of herself as an "obscure Dickinson' because she is distantly related to the late and famous Emily) has found content in the Maine woods. She describes herself, her family and her contentment in 'We Took to the Woods."

...she is so deep in the Maine woods that strangers practically never reach her house. And she likes it. 

The cabin is in the Rangeley Lake Section. There were two cabins when Mrs. Rich wrote her book-- one for summer, and one for winter.

The winter cabin looks like some- thing out of a fairy tale, imbedded as it is in snow too deep and too fluffy to be anything but a stage setting. There are animals all about deer and wildcats and foxes and skunks. Once she befriended a little skunk, and found it made perfect pet, gradually growing a bit wilder, however. Finally it took to the woods. But when by chance it saw Mrs. Rich it always trotted up to her to be fondled and talked to a bit.

Mrs. Rich's first baby was born in the deep woods with only the father as attendant-the doctor couldn't get to the house on time. 

A more poetic review was featured in The Harding Field Echelon:

[Louise once] received a letter from a friend exclaiming, "Isn't it wonderful that you're at last doing what you always wanted." 

[At that moment, Louise realized with a start that she was living her... dream.

There is nothing at all on the hills but forest, and nobody lives there but deer and bear and wildcats. The lakes come down from the north like a gigantic staircase to the sea. Thisis the background for Mrs. Rich's unique and enchanting story.

Her friends are always asking her questions, the kind of questions anyone would put to a woman who lives in a remote wilderness out of choice: 

How do you make a living?

Do you really live there all year round? 

Isn't housekeeping difficult? 

Aren't the children a problem? 

Don't you get terribly bored?

Here the whole panorama of life in the wilderness unfolds: the drama of the spring drive when the logs are brought down the river from the upper lake; the fun of wood-cutting and ice-cutting; the zest of hunting and fishing when one is dependent of the results for food.

There are amusing sidelights on everyday events - [like] the time Mrs. Rich felt she was being watched and in spite of her husband's amusement, went to the door and saw a wildcat eyeing her, no more than three feet from where she had been knitting.

We Took to the Woods is more than an adventure story, more than a simple nature study; it is a shining, refreshing picture of an entirely new way of life. Written with warmth and enthusiasm and great charm, it is a book to stir the imagination of every reader and kindle his heart with envy. 

This book is 368 pages of Louis Dickenson's precious life in the Maine woods.

You can get a copy of We Took to the Woods by Louise Dickinson Rich and support the show using the Amazon link in today's show notes for around $2.