Obsessed

Ok. I've finally met someone who loves Laura Ingalls Wilder more than I do.

Well, I didn't really meet her. I just read her nut-job book...and I LOVED IT.

Here it is: The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie, by Wendy McClure.

Seriously. This girl is out of her sunbonnet-lovin' mind. And, if you've ever had even the slightest case of Prairie Fever, I totally recommend this book.

(By the way, it was originally recommended to me by my awesome friend, Jennifer, who said that it made her think of me. Awww...I take that as a huge compliment. And as evidence that this friend knows the colors of my own particular freak-flag--which apparently include a little calico.)

I don't think I'm giving too much away to say that the author of the book goes on a pilgrimage of sorts to all of the Little House destinations, including the really, really far flung ones. I mean: I'd love to go to some of these places except for the teeny-weeny fact that I don't ever plan to set foot in South Dakota. Ever. Ever, ever. Ever. Ever. EVER.

So, thank you, crazy author-lady, for doing it for me. And for painting such wonderfully vivid (and sometimes hilarious) pictures of your experiences.

Also, I thought it was rather poignant that the author began her pilgrimages not long after her mother died. If I remember correctly, the author re-discovers the Little House books while sorting through her childhood things in her parents' old house. And the books bring on a wave of nostalgia that eventually result in this pilgrimage.

And, I must say, as one who experienced my own surreal year after my mother died several years ago, I could relate to the undefined longing this woman was working through. And I just wanted to step through the pages of the book and say, "Sweetie. I know you don't realize it, but you're looking for your mom."

By the end of the book, the author is finally able to put her obsession to rest, but not before traveling all over America's former frontier lands and seeing (and I quote from the book): six parlor organs, five dugouts, eight covered wagons, countless girls in sunbonnets, five chamberpots, three washboards, three cows, two china shepherdesses, seven flatirons, three whatnots, eight decorative haysticks, five teenage tour guides, a dozen iron cookstoves, and at least six horses.

I'd like to say that this book scratched all of my Little House itches, and that I don't have any unfulfilled longings to make a pilgrimage of my own. Buuuuut, she did describe the house from Farmer Boy oh so beautifully, and it is in upstate New York, and we are living in Yankee Land now. --Soooo...even though it is "as far upstate in New York as you could get, really, up near the border of Quebec," I think it might be worth the trip. And, since I have BOYS and it's is the only Little House book they actually like, it would be a pretty cool excursion for the whole family, right? ...Right?

Wilder Homestead

And I quote:

"The Wilder farm was the most impressively historical-looking place of all the Little House sites I'd seen: a circa 1850s farmhouse painted a deep red with white trim; it stood in a shady grove with an array of barns and stables alongside it. ...It looked very much like the place described in the book, which is pretty remarkable considering Laura's knowledge was secondhand.  ...

We saw it all: the parlor with its fancy wallpaper, the kitchen, the upstairs bedrooms, then out to the barn complex where we learned more about nineteenth-century farm technology than we ever thought possible. I had to admit that it was one of the best house tours I'd been on throughout all my Little House travels."

Oooh! Oooh! Oooh! I want to go! I want to go!

--I mean...it might be nice, you know. Not that I'm obsessed or anything...