The Lookout Tree

After moving with her family to Pleasant View, Illinois, in 1978, ten-year-old Addy Dawson forms a close friendship with Elizabeth "Cricket" Mitchell, a girl with a special gift and a father who resentment about her mother's death in childbirth dominates their relationship.

The Acadian Deportation is told through the eyes of twelve-year-old Fidèle, in the new English version of this Hackmatack Award-winning novel by author Diane Carmel Léger. The Lookout Tree, an English translation of the Acadian bestseller La butte à Pétard, is a testament to the will of the Acadian people, determined to not only survive the two decades of the Deportation, but reunite and rebuild afterward.

A page-turning memoir about a young woman's grueling, revelatory summers working alone in a remote lookout tower and her eyewitness account of the increasingly unpredictable nature of wildfire in the Canadian north. While growing up in Peace River, Alberta, Trina Moyles heard many stories of Lookout Observers--strange, eccentric types who spent five-month summers alone, climbing 100-foot high towers and watching for signs of fire in the surrounding boreal forest. How could you isolate yourself for that long? she wondered. "I could never do it," she told herself. Craving a deeper sense of purpose, she left northern Alberta to pursue a decade-long career in global humanitarian work. After three years in East Africa, and newly engaged, Trina returned to Peace River with a plan to sponsor her fiance, Akello's, immigration to Canada. Despite her fear of being alone in the woods, she applied for a seasonal lookout position and got the job. Thus begins Trina's first summer as one of a handful of lookouts scattered throughout Alberta, with only a farm dog, Holly--labeled "a domesticated wolf" by her former owners--to keep her company. While searching for smoke, Trina unravels under the pressure of a long-distance relationship--and a dawning awareness of the environmental crisis that climate change is producing in the boreal. Through megafires, lightning storms, and stunning encounters with wildlife, she learns to survive at the fire tower by forging deep connections with nature and with an extraordinary community of people dedicated to wildfire detection and combat. In isolation, she discovers a kind of self-awareness--and freedom--that only solitude can deliver. Lookout is a riveting story of loss, transformation, and belonging to oneself, layered with an eyewitness account of the destructive and regenerative power of wildfire in our northern forests.

Charlotte Gill spent twenty years working as a tree planter in Canadian forests. In this book, she examines the environmental impact of logging and celebrates the value of forests from a perspective of some one whose work caught them between environmentalists and loggers.

The Eastern Subarctic has long been portrayed as a place without history. Challenging this perspective, History in the Making: The Archaeology of the Eastern Subarctic charts the complex and dynamic history of this little known archaeological region of North America. Along the way, the book explores the social processes through which native peoples “made” history in the past and archaeologists and anthropologists later wrote about it. As such, the book offers both a critical history and historiography of the Eastern Subarctic.

For half a century Bob Frakes pursued his "Forest Lookout Tower" hobby. All the time he collected papers, pictures, stories and friends. He was urged to put his memories down in a book and not let them be forgotten. "Remembering Missouri's Lookout Towers - A Place above the Trees" is finished. It contains history. What preceded and created a need for the towers? It has stories. What is the goat doing on the top steps? It has technical information. What is the difference between an LS-40 and a MC-39? It has interviews. Those who worked the towers remember. It has submissions. Individuals who lived the life share their thoughts on themselves, what it was like and relatives. Others share their technical knowledge on fire finders, dispatch maps, the forest today, map projects, dozers, etc. And of course, there are the pictures. The book contains over 300 images. Some are archival and one of a kind and many are in color. You can take a tower trip and never leave your living room. You will also find tower names, towers moved, Bucksnort Foodstand, tower mysteries, Smokey Bear, the Royal Order of Squirrels, wood towers, steel towers, lookouts not towers, drone shots, and much more. Missouri is often cited as the nation's #1 conservation success story. Come examine this part of the story as to how it got that way.

Presents three short stories for early readers about the misadventures of Martin Bridge.

From the author of the phenomenally successful The King Who Banned the Dark comes a new tale about community and our relationship with the environment and nature. Once upon a time a group of friends were seeking a place to call home. The desert was too hot, the valley was too wet and the mountain was too windy. Then they found the forest. It was perfect. The leaves gave shelter from the sun and rain, and a gentle breeze wound through the branches. But the friends soon wanted to build shelters. The shelters became houses, then the houses got bigger. All too soon they wanted to control the environment and built a huge wooden wall around the community. As they cut down the trees, the forest becomes thinner, until there is just one last tree standing. It is down to the children to find a solution. 'A timely and inspiring parable.' The Guardian