Hunting for Hope: A Father's Journeys.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: Review - Brief Article

The other book that affected me a lot this year was Scott Russell Sanders's Hunting for Hope: A Father's Journeys (Beacon Press, 1998). It's a book I'll be giving away to half a dozen friends this season.

In this beautiful, sweet, loving account, Sanders tries to find a way out of the despair of our political and ecological condition. He's prompted to do so while camping in the Rocky Mountains with his seventeen-year-old son, Jesse, who has grown weary of his dad's doom and gloom.

"Your view of things is totally dark," Jesse tells his dad. "It bums me out. You make me feel the planet's dying and people are to blame and nothing can be done about it. There's no room for hope. Maybe you can get by without hope, but I can't. I've got a lot of living still to do. I have to believe there's a way we can get out of this mess. Otherwise what's the point? Why study, why work--why do anything if it's all going to hell?"

The question hits home for Sanders (as it does for me). He proceeds to draw up a list in his journal on that trip and for two years afterwards--a list of hope. In reflections and introspections, and above all, in epiphanies "drawn from the muddle of ordinary life," he lays out his claims.

"I have gathered here my own medicine bundle, tokens made of...