"A modern Walden--if Thoreau had had three kids and a minivan--Cabin Fever is a serious yet irreverent take on living in a cabin in the woods while also living within our high-tech, materialist culture. Tom Montgomery Fate turns Thoreau's immortal statement "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately" on its head with the phrase, "I got married and had children because I wished to live deliberately." Though he spends half his time at a cabin in the woods, the author issues no world-renouncing, back-to-nature paean. Fate, unlike Thoreau, balances his solitude with full engagement in family and civic life, and cultivates mindfulnesss in both worlds. Through stories such as "The Confused Cardinal," in which a male bird feeding chicks of another species leads the author to reflect on parenting, and "In the Time of Cicadas," which juxtaposes his wife's hysterectomy with the burgeoning fecundity of seventeen-year cicadas, Fate explores how to live "a more deliberate life" amid a high-tech material culture and invites readers to consider the possibility of enough in a culture of more"-- Provided by publisher.

"Cabin Fever is "Thoreau applied" to the 21st century -- a suburban father's honest exploration of how to live a more deliberate and attentive life within a high-tech, material culture"-- Provided by publisher.

Deliberate life : a search for balance Picking blackberries : nature and technology In plain sight : vision and revision Fathers watching sons : windows and mirrors Saunter : reason and instinct The gay cardinal : love and instinct Cabin fever : alone and lonely In the time of the cicada : patience and passion Mushrooms : love and sex Lake glass : childhood and parenthood

A box of wind : nature and religion Trimming trees : self-reliance and self-destruction - -Constructing truth : wood and word Falling apart : death and birth Coyotes at the mall : predators and prey The art of dying : art and activism Cougars in the corn : facts and truths A familial darkness : desperation and deliberation Travelling at night : seers and seekers Slow pilgrim : walking and praying.