From the lush, windy cloud forest of Monteverde in Central America comes the story of pioneering conservationist Wolf Guindon. Jailed in the United States in 1949 as a conscientious objector, Wolf and his bride Lucky were among a small group of Quakers who left Alabama a year later in search of a new life and found it on a wet, green mountaintop in Costa Rica. For the next twenty years, Wolf labored clearing land, establishing a dairy farm with which he could support his eight children, even as he was falling in love with the flourishing jungle around him. In 1972, he found a new purpose when he helped establish the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve. Since then he has worked relentlessly to secure the protection of the surrounding wilderness so that the flora and fauna of this vast, incredibly beautiful and biologically diverse region will be intact for generations to come.
In 1990, following her first experience of walking with Wolf for several days through the rainforest, Canadian social activist Kay Chornook gave Wolf a tape recorder. She encouraged him to record his many remarkable tales of cutting trails through the dense vegetation, coming face-to-face with wild cats in the darkness, following tapir tracks across the ridges, discovering the magic and mysteries of the wild abundance of the area, and sharing innumerable cups of coffee with homesteaders, biologists and fellow adventurers. Walking with Wolf is a personal memoir, but it is also the history of a place and a movement as well as a celebration of lives lived amongst the trees of both Canada and Costa Rica.
The foreword is by Adrian Forsyth, internationally renowned conservationist and author of Tropical Nature (1987), Portraits of the Rainforest (1995) and How Monkeys Make Chocolate (2006).
Colored photographs, original artwork, maps, glossary, bibliography, and index, along with a lifetime of observations presented against a backdrop of tropical biodiversity, make Walking with Wolf a valuable reference book.
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January 26, 2015 at 6:54 pm
¡Pura Vida! Monteverde | Retiro Cordobes
[…] recollections of this time are recorded in the book Walking with Wolf. Reading this book while on the trip provided a wonderful context for visiting Monteverde. Anna, […]
April 26, 2016 at 5:12 pm
Pioneer Monteverde conservationist Wolf Guindon dies at 85The Tico Times
[…] Chornook is the co-author of “Walking with Wolf: Reflections on a life spent protecting the Costa Rican […]
April 27, 2016 at 12:59 pm
Rex Govorchin
I met Wolf a dozen times on my visits to Monteverde between 1979 and 1997. I have a new book coming out in six to eight weeks and he plays a role as caretaker and story teller in those very early days when Joe Tosi was helping us out with numerous projects. I’m glad to hear he led a long and pleasant life because in the mid eighties he seemed preoccupied with something far away. I cherish those memories of the late seventies and early eighties when Costa Rica was caught up in the regional and political turmoil but the Tico maintained a sense of enlightened independence even without a military. . Good luck with your projects.