Lawrence Millman is a writer and naturalist who has been a resident of Cambridge for 45 years. He is the author of 23 titles, including “Fascinating Fungi of New England,” “Goodbye, Ice: Arctic Poems” and “Hiking to Siberia: Curious Tales of Travel and Travelers.” He has written about his experience being marooned on an Arctic island not on any map, the emotional aftermath of the Vietnam war and a little-known Arctic mass murder from the 1940s. In his latest book, Millman looks inward, to how he developed his love for the natural world. “Outsider: My Boyhood with Thoreau” was published this March.
How did you learn about Thoreau, and what did his presence in your early life look like?
When I was growing up, my parents had a splendid library, and periodically I would take books out and read them, because the books in the library offered an alternative to the books I was reading at school. This meant I ended up reading a lot of books at an earlier age than would have been recommended. My parents had a copy of “Walden” in their library, and from what I could understand, I really liked it. I decided I’d like to live the life that Thoreau had lived at Walden Pond, so I pitched a tent in my backyard. I had always been an outsider as a kid, both in the sense of preferring the outdoors to the indoors and of not really liking any social group.
How did those childhood experiences you had with Thoreau influenced the life you live today?
I really pursued a life based on those experiences. I’m proud to say that. I believe work is a four-letter word; I’ve made my way as a writer and a naturalist. I’ve lived a life of my own choosing, rather than a life of someone else’s choosing. I find it evil to work 9 to 5, day after day, totally repetitive and boring. I don’t know how people can survive. What I do is I wake up in the morning and I usually write, but if it’s nice I’ll go for a walk. I’ll look for mushrooms because, among other things, I’m a mycologist. There’s almost never any routine to what I do.
What was the impetus for writing this 23rd book? Did something inspire you to turn toward your own life?
The real impetus was just that I felt like writing a memoir. I’ve written 23 books, but I’ve never written about myself. I started by writing a memoir of my whole life, but when I finished it was not great. It was just all over the place, it didn’t have any order at all. The beginning of the memoir, though, the section on my childhood, was nice and orderly, so I decided to publish just that as “Outsider.” When one looks back upon one’s past as one gets older, one’s childhood is often clearer than what happened yesterday. My writing about my childhood was sharper, clearer and more focused than any of the rest of it because my memory of that time was better. In a way, I think I also felt a greater need to write about my childhood than about something that happened two or three years ago.
Do you think you’ll revisit the rest of your memoir?
I don’t think I will. “Outsider” is strong and I think it tells an interesting story about my early life. By publishing the book, I succeeded in what I set out to do, which was write a memoir. I will mention that I have published bits and pieces of the rest of it as essays here and there, but beyond that I don’t plan to go back to it.
Did you learn anything from exploring this new writing style that you think you’ll take with you?
That I can write a memoir, but I can also go on and write other things. For me, it’s simply onto the next thing. I’m happy with “Outsider” but I’m also happy to be working on a new project: what’s called the “Luddite’s Lexicon.” It’s like a little dictionary, with the entries being terms that pertain to today’s life of technology and machines and computers. They’re satirical and humorous – they’re not overly serious, because I believe that wit is one of the ways one can deal with the world’s problems.
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