Book Review: My Side of the Mountain

(I have copies of this book in English and in Spanish I wrote reviews of each edition on a different day; therefore they're different reviews. This is what came to mind after my last rereading of My Side of the Mountain in English.)

Title: My Side of the Mountain

Author: Jean Craighead George

Date: 1959

Publisher: Dutton / Penguin / Puffin

ISBN: 0-14-034810-7

Length: 177 pages

Illustrations: drawings by the author

Quote: "I am on my mountain in a tree home that people have passed without ever knowing that I am here. The house is a hemlock tree six feet in diameter."

When naturalist and novelist Jean George was a little girl, she said, she told her mother she was going to live alone in the woods. Her parents had taught her to find food in the woods, so her mother advised her to take a toothbrush and a postcard. George was home in less than an hour. She tells us her parents had had the urge to live alone in the woods, too, and so had her daughter: "I checked her backpack for her toothbrush and...blew her a kiss...Presently, she was back."

But, for those who want to read about a child who actually lives alone for months, here's the fictional account of Sam Gribley, a child who has absorbed the same survival information George's family passed down, but who is improbably immune to the urge to be home in time for dinner, finish reading that book, be tucked in at night by Mom, and hang out with friends the next day. Sam is obviously not a normal child; George spends some time assuring us that he's not even conspicuously "Aspy," just  a stubborn teenager, determined to prove that he can do what he does. Living in a big city with too many siblings, he's heard of an old abandoned farm to which he's the heir, on which he'd have the right to live. So he saves his money and one day he goes out to live there, all alone.

Like most introverts Sam does enjoy human company. The biggest threat to his life as a hermit is that he enjoys company and makes friends easily. Even the medieval monastic hermits, who took vows not to live with other people on a regular basis, were known for their hospitality; after a few weeks of solitude Sam is happy to let a visitor have his bed, and sleep on the ground. For most of us, the trouble with Sam's lifestyle would not be that Sam's survival skills are too hard for the average twelve-year-old to practice (they're not) but that most young people wouldn't want or need that much solitude. 

(Does it matter that Sam is a boy and that Jean Renvoize's less successful Wild Thing, Morag, is a girl? I think not. I don't think it matters that Sam is obviously a bright student and Morag is described as a problem student, either; Morag has her fair share of survival intelligence. I think the difference is that Sam is determined to live entirely on his own for a few months; he can go back to town and school when he chooses, and he does. He's a temporary hermit. Morag plans to be a permanent outlaw, which is less sustainable.)

It should perhaps be noted that although my brother was more drawn to the practical details of survival in My Side of the Mountain and I was more drawn to the human relationships in Where the Lilies Bloom, the book my brother always talked of wanting to write, himself (as distinct from wanting me to write), was about the practical details of how a family of orphans survived without adult help for a good long time. Sam is one lucky little survivalist in this novel. We knew firsthand, from having seen our big strong father slip on loose gravel and break an ankle, that no matter how strong or tough you are, you want to have more than a tame hawk and a friendly raccoon living near you in the woods.

That said...kids can learn from Sam: It can take a looonnng time to start a campfire with flint and steel--don't bet your life on being able to do it even if you have flint, steel, and dry tinder. You can eat cattails, walnuts, violets, dandelions, spring beauties. You can do a lot of things with acorns if you take the time to leach out the tannin, which Sam doesn't mention doing. You can kill and eat many kinds of wild animals without metal traps or guns, although probably not as easily as Sam does, and although most of them aren't exactly a treat; for living on the land, it's a huge advantage to be a part-time vegan. (In summer, many wild animals carry nasty diseases.) Campfires are much, much less dangerous in the East (and in winter) than in the West (or even in late summer), but always present some hazards, one of the less obvious of which is that they can consume the oxygen in a snug shelter. Your body can adjust to lower temperatures and feel reasonably comfortable until temperatures drop to within a few degrees of the freezing point of water; below that point you must have some shelter, warm clothes and boots, and some source of heat beyond your body or even a friend's body. A bird, if you happen to be able to bond with one, is a reliable warning of poor air quality. And you don't need walls and a door to have a home, but you do need a family...especially parents, if living.

I'd like to add this comment for young readers. There will be plenty of time to live without your parents at the other end of your life. A few people have parents who are truly bad human beings and should be abandoned as early as possible, by any and every means necessary. Normal parents are loved and will be missed. One should never lose any opportunity to enjoy the company of one's parents.

One should, of course, encourage one's parents to appreciate wilderness living. Sam does, and as a reward his story gets the happiest of all possible endings.

My brother and I, along with our parents, did most of the things Sam does in this story--the ones that work in the Virginia mountains. (Sam lives in New York State, with colder winters and other slight environmental differences. In our part of the world, hollowing a tree for shelter would be wasteful and stupid even if one found a tree big enough. We have caves.) They're fun. Young readers don't have to give up being tucked in by Mom at night and playing on the school sports team to share many of the pleasures of Sam's fictional life, on weekends.

Some of Sam's pleasures are now recognized as unwise. Sam kills deer when he needs meat and leather. In real life you wouldn't be able to do that twice in a season, and it would be foolish if you were. Sam catches a young hawk (a very dangerous idea) and rears it as his main companion (not a very sanitary idea) and expects it to be able to supply his protein needs within his territory (a silly idea for serious carnivores who want meat twice a day). Sam doesn't mention how he disposes of bodywastes but does mention bathing in a mountain spring, which used to be the primary way polio virus spread.

But you can still eat the native plants Sam eats, cooking them Sam's way if you want to, if they grow near you. You can still make the camp conveniences he makes. Sam's leather clothes would not be much fun to wear in real life; even hemp and flax (linen) clothes last so long because they stay stiff, heavy, and uncomfortable for the first several months, but you can try making your own clothes from cotton or the inner coat of any animal that sheds its coat in spring. You can try making flutes or whistles, too. You can even try bonding with a wild animal, as Sam does--not trying to cuddle it (most adult animals don't cuddle) but hanging out with it, observing its behavior.