John Hildebrand

“The hired men who came to the farm arrived on necessity’s timetable but left on their own, staying for a few days or a season or off and on over a lifetime.

When they are remembered these days, it is for a certain skill or peculiarity, those often being the same.”

-excerpt from Mapping the Farm

Like Edward Hoagland and John McPhee, John Hildebrand is an adventurer/observer. Hildebrand has canoed the rivers, tilled the soil, and trekked the cornfields and brush lands in search of what it is that makes our lives interesting and significant.

Along the way he has caught big fish and harvested wild game, and he has transformed these experiences into a collection of essays and two other books: a narrative of a wild and crazy ride down the Yukon River and a chronicle of an Upper Midwest farm family.

Reading the River is part travel guide, part meditation on life. Mapping the Farm is a record of social and economic changes. One reviewer calls the book “an essential American story about believing in the value of what you do, about finding pleasure in your work, taking pride, and surviving.”