Naked in the Woods – Joseph Knowles and the Legacy of
Frontier Fakery by Jim Motavalli
A man walks completely naked into the
wilderness to survive for two months without any food, human
contact, tools or ready made shelter. Sounds like the latest
episode of Survivorman? Well, almost. While Survivorman's
Les Stroud is performing quite impressive feats, and is “One
man – alone in the wilderness... no food, no shelter,
no fresh water, no tools... no camera crew”, he is in
some ways merely writing another page in the book that Joseph
Knowles, the infamous “Nature Man” of Maine, started
writing already back in 1913. Upon emerging from his ordeal
after two months, Knowles became a sensation and triumphantly
toured the nation, lecturing about and demonstrating his woodsman
survival skills.
In Naked in the Woods, environmental author and journalist
Jim Motavalli not only portrays faithfully the life and times
of Knowles, and the enthusiasm and controversy around his
wilderness exploits, but also opens a window to the era. The
author travels with Knowles from the forests of Maine to the
Oregon coasts, the newsrooms of Boston to an artists' driftwood
cottage in the Pacific Northwest. Motavalli contextualizes
the events in the relationship of Man and Nature, Knowles'
life, and the media's exploitation of popular trends, then
and now.
Knowles was quite a character, that's for sure. Born in
1869, he grew up in Wilton in rural Maine, and by the time
he walked naked into the forest in front of the clicks of
the newspaper cameras he already manged to travel the seas
with the navy, learn woodcraft with Native Americans, and
establish himself as an artist living in a studio in Boston.
Like Les Stroud the survivorman, Knowles did not need a camera
crew with him, but sent dispatches and drawings to the media
written with his cookfire charcoal on birch bark. But did
he really spent all this time in the wilderness? Or did he
retire to a luxurious cabin for two months, courtesy of a
newspaper looking to boost its circulation? The book investigates
these claims in detail.
Motavalli also explores the reasons for Knowles' story becoming
such a media sensation at the time. Why then? He concludes
that the main reason was the American anxiety over losing
its frontier at the turn of the century, and transitioning
from a rural to an urban society. Nature was slipping away
from day to day life of the average American in a matter of
a generation or two. Knowles the “Nature Man”
was there to show the American public that the wilderness
and the frontier were still there to face and conquer.
This is not only a strict academic study,
and Motavalli does not present us with a dense cultural theory.
He does however flesh out existing cultural history theories
about Frontier, Nature, Wilderness and American culture, by
using this particular instance to show us how it all played
out.
There's no doubt “Nature Man” loved the forests
and the beaches where he lived, but would he be called an
environmentalist today? Probably not. When he went into the
woods he wanted to demonstrate that modern man could best
nature, hardly part and parcel of today's green ethos with
its more harmonious undertones. But I am sure that he would
have a thing or two to say about the bona fide-ness of today's
armchair environmentalists with their cozy REI gear and Coleman
gas stoves, and can inspire some of us to follow his lead
and go naked into the woods one day. Well, if he really did
it, that is.
Title: Naked in the Woods – Joseph Knowles and the
Legacy of Frontier Fakery
Link: http://www.perseusbooksgroup.com/dacapo/book_detail.jsp?isbn=0786720085
Author: Jim Motavalli
Publisher: Da Capo
Publication Date: January 28, 2008
Pages: 352
This green
book review was originally posted at the Eco-Libris blog.
More resources:
1. The book on Amazon.com
2. COMMENTARY:
The E Magazine “Naked in the Woods” Contest!,
Jim Motavalli, The E magazine
3. Book review on Military.com
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