Review: An Active Peace,   Letters From Susquehannock, essays on Place by Walt Franklin, Wood Thrush Books, 1995, $6.00, 96 Inervale Ave. Burlington VT 05401

Before we get into the text of Walt Franklin’s book we read: “Letters From Susquehannock is Part I of a three-part work called A Rivertop Journal. Parts II and III are currently unpublished.” Publishers should take note. Sign this guy up. And here’s why. Nature books apparently sell well, certainly better than poetry. And Franklin is a poet. He knows what it means to be under appreciated, neglected, not recognized for preserving some beauty in our language. Perhaps people who appreciate the beauty of nature will treat him better. I hope so. This is a beautiful little book. I hope those who appreciate the beauty of the essay will be as numerous as those who say we need to sacrifice to save the environment, 60 or 70 percent according to polls I’ve heard about though you wouldn’t know it from listening to the politicians bent on destroying the EPA.

Consider the last essay in the book: “Upon the Earth.” The essay reveals Franklin’s mastery of the essay structure, weaving his story from the natural history of Epigaea ripens (epi-gaea, upon-Mother Earth), the mayflower, trailing arbutus, his encounter with the gypsy moth, comparison of his own life with the arbutus, rooted and filled with earth value, an auto accident, and the healing properties not of nature but, most importantly, our relationship to nature, which is another way of saying our relationship with ourselves. This essay is as good as anything in the writings of Edwin Way Teale, the master stylist of nature writing. But there is something else that makes it something better than Teale’s writing. Franklin not only knows that we cannot live apart from nature but that we must be a part of the struggle to preserve and protect it, and by extension the struggle to protect ourselves. Too many nature lovers have forgotten Henry David’s political activism, retreating instead into a paralyzing quietism or a corporate-based legalism which is just as harmful to the environment, the wilderness without and that within ourselves. Not Franklin. An excerpt from this last essay will give you a sense of the strength of his commitment, but for a full appreciation of the strength and grace of his writing, buy the book and read it, and then if you know some “big” publisher ....

Although man and arbutus sail through space on the same deteriorated craft, only we who have attuned ourselves to the environment have voices that together can be hurled out at the gods who lend an ear. Only we can speak out for the safety and the future of us all, only we can face the rich and powerful few and declare that the times has come for no more compromises, that a life measured by GNP and economic competition is madness and malaise, and that we shout our message into the storm until the winds subside.

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