“Sauntering, Thoreau-style"
Written by Victor Carl Friesen
Published by Your Nickel's Worth Publishing
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$25.00 ISBN 9-781988-783468
I embraced daily outdoor explorations decades ago, so was delighted when Rosthern, SK writer-photographer Victor Carl Friesen’s book, Sauntering, Thoreau-style, arrived in my mailbox. Friesen, a multi-genre writer, has several books behind him - including nonfiction, short stories, poetry and children’s literature - and in this latest title he revisits a favourite subject: the writer, naturalist, and legendary Massachusetts walker, Henry David Thoreau. Many will be familiar with Thoreau’s Walden - his literary response to a two-year sojourn at Walden Pond. Friesen’s book – a compilation of essays; mostly Saskatchewan photographs; poetry; and Thoreau’s own quoted, poetic observations - is an homage to Thoreau, and the images “were chosen to reflect Thoreau’s world”.
The colour photographs (there’s a single black and white), interspersed between Friesen’s engaging, Thoreau-centred text, are presented like a pleasant album. Each index-card-sized photograph is centered on the page within a thin black border. Ample white space on each page gives the nature scenes a “gallery wall” effect. Lily pads, shadowed reflections, and a moose in water are among the images in the first set, titled “Waters”.
I admire the way Friesen sees the world through his discriminating lens. Leaves, sunsets, rivers, snow, flowers … these are the stuff of Thoreau’s world, and of Friesen’s well-written and well-photographed tribute to Thoreau’s “sensuous approach to the world of nature”.
