Drinking the Rain: A Memoir

Thoughtful and interesting memoir exploring her growing connection with the natural world beginning at age 50. Shulman's memoir looks back at her early involvement in the feminist movement and reflects on her marriage, but her primary focus is on the time she spends at a rough cabin on a Maine coastal island. Coming from a very active New York City life, she learns to slow down, to forage for mussels, seaweeds, and other wild foods, to live with the rhythms of the changing summer. Without central heating (or plumbing, electricity and phone), she leaves each fall to a crumbling marriage or to new work as creative writing teacher. She introduces us to a few friends who influence her to accept the joy she feels living on the island.. show more
Reading someone else's slow awareness of nature made me appreciate my own instinctive need and connection to the natural world which has guided my entire life. I had difficulty relating to (or appreciating) her references to big city life in the first part of the book. The book ends at age 60 as she becomes aware that all is not well with the environment; in increasing amount of trash and pollution is washing up on the shores, yet she is buoyed by the involvement of younger activists as she strives for the balance between acceptance and action. show less

I didn't particularly enjoy this memoir because of her style of writing, a bit fluffy and pompous, but I can appreciate her spiritual trip in life to find herself, to find answers and solidity in what she actually believes and truly wants out of her life. She's very lucky to have been supported by her now ex-husband to go off on her own, and leaving the kids behind, to different remote places over the years for the self-feeding of her inner soul, and especially for going off alone summers at a time to their little shack on a small remote island off the coast of Maine.

Here she tested herself in living naturally and in oneness with nature by doing her very best to eat only what the earth provided in the way of weeds and berries for show more salads, and herbs growing around the cabin for seasoning, and mussels, crabs and clams for her food source. I love that she had great books on identifying wild weeds for her specific area on food sources that she could read and learn more about as the days passed.

But, she ended up divorced and mentally wondered about her sanity. Admitting to being a feminist activist, I believe she had her priorities all wrong in life. She was fighting for all the wrong things. But, I don't think she put the two together.

Only time alone on this island where she could think and live freely, was she finally able to separate the GARBAGE she had been indocrinated into from the real, God-given life she was meant to live. Now, this is only my opinion because I don't believe she actually saw how much happier she was to clear her mind of such self-absorbing thoughts while alone on the island.

Her attentions turned from self-centered and impowering herself as a woman to protecting nature and the foods we eat. She sets the best example that she can, never perfect. She sees how we humans are destroying this earth. So do I. But, since you can't control the whole world, you adapt to the changing times and you just do your best to leave a smaller footprint. show less

excellent book - would like to read more from her