The Frog Run: Words and Wildness in the Vermont Woods

by John Elder and John C. Elder

Book Overview

The North Woods tradition of making maple syrup serves as an illuminating backdrop for John Elder's reflections on nature, literature, playfulness, and fatherhood, as he builds a sugaring house with his sons.

The tail end of the sugaring season in New England is called the "frog run," when pools of snowmelt teem with frogs and the last run of sap good for making syrup flows from the maple trees. For John Elder, a longtime...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1571312587
• ISBN13: 9781571312587
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: Milkweed Editions
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.0" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Celebration in the Vermont Wilds

John Elder, in this Credo Series book, intertwines observations of his three loves of - literature, nature and his family - into a celebration of life itself.The book's title marks the moment between winter and spring when the tree frogs commence croaking, warning of the last maple tree sap good for distilling into syrup. The Credo Series offers contemporary American writers an opportunity to discuss the fluid and subtle issues of a world in constant change. Elder offers a message of hope; a hope grounded his lineage, literature and the land; how he found balance building a sugarhouse with his sons in the Vermont Woods.My favorite essay in the collection is "Starting with the Psalms: A Reader's History" where he weaves memories of the 23rd Psalm into a discussion of John Milton's Paradise Lost with a little Annie Dillard, Robert Frost and Gary Snyder thrown in to season the discussion. Grounded in his experience as a professor and writer living in the Green Mountains of Vermont, Elder connects literature with the landscape that inspired it.Elder is a treasure; a man who seamlessly weaves the dots of his existence into a portrait that honors his observations of his place on earth.