The mystery of connection lies at the heart of Hunting from Home . . . . The stealthy cadence of Camuto's prose reveals glimpses of his effort to do justice to a place and way of life that often seem just beyond his reach; hunting becomes a metaphor of how to capture the natural within the self and on the page.
New York Times Book Review
Bloomsbury Review
"The mystery of connection lies at the heart of Hunting from Home . . . . The stealthy cadence of Camuto's prose reveals glimpses of his effort to do justice to a place and way of life that often seem just beyond his reach; hunting becomes a metaphor of how to capture the natural within the self and on the page."--New York Times Book Review
"Camuto's book holds many attractions: his observations about his world and its delights—the trees, the flowers, the stars, the unexpected sight of deer running through the snow on a moonlit night, the presence of Carolina wrens nesting on his front porch, the smell of newly split wood—are memorable and can hold their own with the best nature writing."--Publishers Weekly
"It is difficult to imagine anyone who walks on the land with greater circumspection and appreciation than Camuto."--Kirkus Reviews
In this celebration of a year in the country, Camuto (A Fly Fisherman's Blue Ridge), who lives in a four-room log cabin near the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, meditates on the pleasures of nature and his place in it. Eloquently conveying the joy he takes in finding "the miraculous in the common," he writes of the passing seasons, the ever-changing landscape, and the animals and birds that inhabit the mountains and the 200-acre farm he calls home. He also spends much of his time hunting and fishing-grouse in winter, trout in early spring, deer in fall and early winter-and the hunting theme permeates the book. As he admits, it may seem incongruous that someone who loves nature so much is an avid hunter. But, he says, "Hunting has weighted my time outdoors and clarified a great deal for me, taught me innumerable practical lessons and taken me in certain dreamlike moments through the transcendental concentration of the hunt to contact with what I assume is the sacred pulse of being, my own and that of the game I pursue." Nicely covering the same poetic ground as Ted Kerasote and Rick Bass, Camuto describes days spent in the woods tracking grouse, the details of teaching himself bow hunting, or cleaning deer. Camuto's book holds many attractions: his observations about his world and its delights-the trees, the flowers, the stars, the unexpected sight of deer running through the snow on a moonlit night, the presence of Carolina wrens nesting on his front porch, the smell of newly split wood-are memorable and can hold their own with the best nature writing. (Mar.) Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.
A heavily mulled account of a country year, an ordinary place in rural Virginia where nature writer Camuto (Another Country, 1997, etc.) takes his joy, celebrates, studies. Camuto is agog at the pure happiness he feels when abroad in the Blue Ridge countryside he calls home, in awe of its venerability. He endeavors to join the landscape, and hunting is one of his vehicles as he pokes about with his dog through "a funky patch of mulish mountain farmland wildly reasserting itself," or goes bow hunting, which "requires slipping into the not-there, getting so close to deer that you are where they are, within the space of their awareness without them being aware of you." Camuto is at his best when he is simply out there reveling, which is where we find him most of the time. But he can also be a bore, endeavoring to justify hunting by trotting out 10th-century Chinese sage Fan K'uan or 20th-century Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset (when will this poor man be given a rest by conscience-stricken hunters?). It would be so much easier, not to mention more honorable and believable, for the author to say that hunting makes him feel good and natural, that he does it with respect, that his take is modest. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine anyone who walks on the land with greater circumspection and appreciation than Camuto. His fondness for thinking aloud on the page sometimes results in such best-kept-to-himself reveries as "the musty wing revives the memory of an odor ancient as pine sap," or "I watch day and night exchange gifts." But then he will win you back by revealing the times he thought he was onto something deep and mystical, only to discover it was a robin or a dogwood without leaves.Which just serves to underscore the heart of the matter: it's all in the seeing. Slightly self-conscious, but often inviting.
