FEASTING WILD

A geographer and environmental anthropologist travels the globe in search of those who hunt and gather in the midst of civilization.

Although La Cerva pays some attention to those who pick mushrooms and weeds for food and medicine, she focuses mostly on those who kill animals—often illegally, though in line with historical and cultural traditions—chronicling her time in Maine, Scandinavia, Poland, Borneo, and, particularly, the Democratic Republic of Congo. Eating at the world-famous Copenhagen restaurant Noma, the author ruminates on how the act of serving tiny portions of wild foods—including “caramel made from sourdough bread yeast served with Icelandic yogurt and sea buckthorn flower marmalade”—is in some ways a “fetishization of need.” La Cerva prefers the fried grasshoppers she and her friends ate as children in New Mexico, which “tasted like some kind of discordant freedom.” In chapters that bounce precipitously from topic to topic, the author manages to keep a steady eye on her central concern: the contradictions inherent in eating “wild” meat at this point in human history. She shows sympathy for those who hunt and sell “bushmeat,” including monkeys and elephants, but not for the rich at home and abroad who use this meat as a sign of status. A narrative strand about her romantic entanglement with a Swedish conservationist—who coordinates anti-poaching efforts at a rainforest reserve and whose “narrow lips arch into two perfect mountains at the center, surrounded by deep smile lines, like the walls of a canyon valley”—follows a fairly predictable path and contributes little to the story. Throughout, La Cerva demonstrates her ability for diligent observation, and if her prose is sometimes overwrought, it also offers glimpses of human activities that have grown increasingly rare—e.g., butchering a moose or gathering birds' nests for soup.

For armchair adventurers, a competent examination of the pros and cons of living off the land.