Freedom in the Wilds

"Rebecca Foster’s new edition of Harold Weston’s great autobiographical meditation on nature and art is much more than a new edition. It’s the book Weston himself might have written, if he’d had time and the advantage of looking back on his life from the mountaintop. It’s a unique addition to the literature of twentieth century art. With these new materials, Foster has brought to Weston’s book a context artistic, philosophical, and biographical that places it among the classics of American writing about the relationship between art, nature, and the deeply examined life."—Russell Banks, author of Cloudsplitter

"Weston was a latter-day John Wesley Powell, the one-armed explorer of the Green and Colorado Rivers. Lamed in one leg by polio, Weston had such a Romantic fascination with the wild and difficult, and [with] such energy, that he somehow propelled himself up and down the Adirondack peaks winter and summer during a long life. Weston’s well known autobiographical history of the region has now been expertly revised and includes not only color plates but also a trove of letters and diaries that are as vivid as his paintings and even more revealing of his inner life."—John Walsh, Director Emeritus, J. Paul Getty Museum