Picnics and Porcupines

This stunning venture into the American picnic explores how innovation, exploitation, and the changing wilderness of Michigan's Upper Peninsula have shaped the experience of eating outdoors. From a photo of her grandmother picnicking in 1911, to the outdoor lunches of miners and loggers, to the picnics of vacationing celebrities like Henry Ford and Ernest Hemingway, author Candice Goucher opens an aperture into historic memories of picnics past. With the inclusion of recipes from Indigenous and immigrant traditions, this work navigates an entangled environmental and culinary history, tracing the transformation and loss of the forest to the creation of a modern notion of wilderness as it emerged in the North American imagination and popular culture.