When the pandemic struck, nature writer David Gessner turned to Henry David Thoreau, the original social distancer, for lessons on how to live. Those lessons—of learning our own backyard, rewilding, loving nature, self-reliance, and civil disobedience—hold a secret that could help save us as we face the greater crisis of climate. Gessner’s new book is Quiet Desperation, Savage Delight: Sheltering with Thoreau in the Age of Crisis, published by Torrey House Press.
David Gessner is the author of Leave It As It Is: A Journey Through Theodore Roosevelt’s American Wilderness and the New York Times–bestselling All the Wild That Remains: Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner and the American West. Gessner is a professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, and founder and editor-in-chief of Ecotone, He lives in Wilmington, North Carolina, with his wife, the novelist Nina de Gramont, and their daughter, Hadley.
David Gessner's Utah events include:
July 8 at the Entrada Institute in Torrey, 7PM.
July 11 at Boulder Mountain Lodge in Boulder, 11AM.
July 15 at Ken Sanders Rare Books in Salt Lake City, 7PM
