Flying Blind: One Man's Adventures Battling Buckthorn, Making Peace with Authority, and Creating a Home for Endangered Bats

Interesting but more about the bats and less new age introspection would have been better.

Pay attention to the trees and vegetation--beneficial and invasive--on your property.

Enjoyed this book very much.

Meandering. Unfocused. Self-indulgent. A book desperately in need of an editor.

I was a little surprised when I started reading this. Mitchell is the same age as my true love. They both hold philosophy degrees. Both lived/worked/went to school in Boston at the same time. There's this anti-authority bias. I kept flipping to the author photo to make sure. As I continued to read, however, their stories diverged.Mitchell explores both his woods and his psyche in this. One doesn't learn much about bats, but it's okay. Mitchell is plenty interesting, as are the government program [...]

Flying Blind is an engaging tale about a highly specific place and a highly specific situation. Mitchell's descriptions of the woods and the people of Vermont made me feel like I was back in Addison County again, and while I've never had to turn multiple acres of wooded land into a government-approved endangered bat habitat, the way that he shared his wider reflections and insights about his family and personality made the book feel more relatable and less like a how-to manual. Ultimately, it re [...]

This book was not what I expected. It was written in a very stream of consciousness like style and was more about the author's life than bats. The bats were woven into each chapter, however and create the overarching storyline of the book somehow tying everything together in the end. The stories told seem to be ones that the author needed to tell and range from stories about growing up, how to run a chainsaw, abuse, nature and man, and dealing with various government agencies. It is worth a read [...]

I love this memoir, which details the author's experiences in dealing with authority, starting with his stern father and going on to the government as well as his adventures, if you can call it that, in creating a home for endangered bats. Being of the same generation, I could really relate to some of his realities, but I think there is a lot there for people of different generations to connect with, as well.

The man can write, and the book's font was great, and the content was interesting enough. But for someone who said he "was now in love with bats," there was a scarcity of them. It was more about what he was getting out of the contract than them. The writing carried it off, but this book could have been spectacular if it were more about the original topic: bats.

Great story about a Vermont sheep farmer and his efforts to improve bat habitat on his land. The book also leads the reader through the author's meditations on his life and family relationships. I really enjoyed this book.

Lesrnef some stuff to help me understand my parks dept friends lives.

Not as riveting as I'd hoped. It was interesting, but it meandered away from the title topic a lot. Worth reading if you are interested in bats and restoration.

Not a bad book, but disappointing to me because it isn't all that much about bats. It was fun to get a glimpse into what life would have been like if I had moved to Vermont in the seventies.

A deep and highly introspective memoir, as well as an amazing, picturesque and complex story. A dense read, but a good one.