Zoro's Field: My Life in the Appalachian Woods - Softcover

I have known Thomas Crowe for thirty years or so, as poet, writer, editor, and community activist. Before he returned to North Carolina he was a neighbor in my part of California. I have always respected his work and dedication as someone who has truly found both his place and his work, and recommend him highly. His writing speaks from a fluency with landscape and an ease with language like water. At home in both.

Crowe’s phrasing of the voices that resound throughout the hill country of western North Carolina echoes the mutually enhancing presence of humans and the Earth, which is the high experience to which we are called. He reminds me of T'ao Ch'ien, the fifth-century Chinese poet.

With this book Crowe adds his voice to the classic prayer of the True Warrior, 'Not for myself alone do I ask, but that all my relations may live.’

Crowe's reflections, while made under circumstances many of us shall never experience, are all the more valid for our lives in the high-tech world in which we live.

Straightforward and heartfelt. . . . a hymn to the simple life and its virtues. Crowe does not expect everyone to unplug and head for the woods as he once did, but the lessons he learned contain valuable truths that we ignore at our peril. Like Thoreau, he is a chanticleer, hoping to wake us up.

This book will appeal to anyone (and we are many) who has imagined unhinging from the cumbersome structures of 'progress' and consumerism in order to know the rhythms of quiet work and nature.

Crowe's writing arises from his close connection with the land, his poetry, and his devotion to uncovering the spirit of the place of his habitation. The result is that the work sings with the music of his own voice.

For those of us who have a love affair with these southern mountains, this author speaks our language. . . . Crowe's sharp intellect, his world experience and a deep-in-the-pit-of-your-stomach love for the Appalachian landscape make this book pure treasure.