Wilderness Called Home

Canadians connect with the wilderness in an endless number of subtle or impassioned ways: as sea captains, mountaineers, artists, eco-warriors, rafters, nudists, and industrialists—or simply as canoeists or cottage dwellers. In April 2000, Charles Wilkins set off from his Lake Superior home on travels that took him coast to coast: aboard a working freighter on the Great Lakes, then overland to the west, at times on foot in the mountains and rainforests and along the sea coasts. His travels culminated in an intense two-week sojourn alone in the wilderness of northern Canada. This compelling blend of travel narrative and portraiture, of unexpected exotica and humour, brings to life Wilkins's discoveries about the nature of our attachments to the land and waters. Come into the sauna with the nudist members of the Traditional Finnish Sauna Society of Thunder Bay. Meet Winston Books, an eccentric Toronto engineer with a bizarre lifestyle and infectious passion for the night sky. Share the tensions and energy of the captain and crew of the freighter MV Paterson. And encounter the Lawson family who, despite their 19th-century living habits, have fomented a 21st-century ecological revolution on Clayoquot Sound. A Wilderness Called Home helps make sense of the wilds around us—the wilds that are our Canadian home, no matter how jaded and urban we become.

The compelling story of one family's life among the rugged landscapes of British Columbia's Coast Mountains, converting youthful ideals, raw land and a passion for the outdoors into a practical off-grid homestead. Rob Wood grew up in a village on the edge of the Yorkshire Moors, where he eventually developed a preoccupation with rock climbing. After studying architecture for five years at the Architectural Association School in London, England, he made his way to Montreal and ended up in Calgary. During his time in Calgary, Rob became a pioneer of ice climbing and posted numerous first ascents in the Rockies during the early 1970's. Eventually, life in corporate Alberta proved unfulfilling and Rob realized that he needed to find a place where he could reconnect with nature, which brought him to the remote reaches of Canada's West Coast. Settling on Maurelle Island, he and his wife built an off-the-grid homestead and focussed on alternative communities and developing a small house-design practice specializing in organic and wholesome building techniques. At Home in Nature is a gentle and philosophical memoir that focuses on living a life deeply rooted in the natural world, where citizens are connected to the planet and individuals work together to help, enhance and make the world a better -- and sustainable -- place.

A powerful novel of young love and rural isolation from the acclaimed author of In the Wilderness. Thomas Deracotte is just out of medical school, and his pregnant wife, Helen, have their whole future mapped out for them in upper-crust Connecticut. But they are dreamers, and they set out to create their own farm in rural Idaho instead. The fields are in ruins when they arrive, so they hire a farmhand named Manny to help rebuild. But the sudden, frightening birth of their daughter, Elise, tests the young couple, and Manny is called upon to mend this fractured family. An extraordinary story of hope and idealism, A Country Called Home is a testament to the power of family—the family we are born to and the family we create.

Everyone warned Kobie Kruger that being the wife of a game warden at a remote ranger station in South Africa's largest national park would be difficult. The heat would be challenging, malaria would be a constant danger, her husband, Kobus, would have to be away for long stretches of time, there were no schools or nearby doctors for their three daughters, and of course, the place teemed with wild animals. Yet for Kobie and her family, the 17 years in South Africa's Kruger National Park were the most magical --and occasionally most hair-raising --of their lives. When the Kruger family first arrived at the ranger station, Kobie felt she had found heaven on earth. Sunshine glowed in the lush garden where fruitbats hung in the sausage trees; hippos basked in the glittering waters of the Letaba River; storks and herons perched along the shore. That same night, she awoke to find a python slithering silently across her bedroom floor. It was the perfect introduction to the wonders and terrors that awaited her. As the Krugers settled in, they became accustomed to living in the midst of ravishing splendour and daily surprises. A honey badger they nursed back to health rampaged playfully through the house. Sneaky hyenas stole blankets and cookware. Ordinarily placid elephants grew foul-tempered and violent in the summer heat. And one terrible day, the shadow of tragedy fell across the family when a lion attacked Kobus in the bush and nearly killed him. But nothing prepared the Krugers for the adventure of raising an orphaned prince. The lion cub was only a few days old and on the verge of death when they found him alone in the wilds. But Leo, as the girls promptly named the cub, survived on loads of love and bottles of fat-enriched milk, and was soon a rambunctious member of the family. Writing with deep affection and luminous prose, Kobie Kruger captures the mystery of untamed Africa -- its fathomless skies, soulful landscapes, and most of all, its astonishing array of animals. By turns funny and heartbreaking, engaging and alarming, "The Wilderness Family" is an unforgettable memoir of a woman, her family, and the amazing game park they called home for 17 incredible years.

At once a riveting adventure story and a testament to one woman's resourcefulness, Nuk Tessli is also a heartfelt elegy to the true wilderness and a cry for it's sensible use.

Longtime fly fisherman Quinn Grover had contemplated the "why" of his fishing identity before more recently becoming focused on the "how" of it. He realized he was a dedicated fly fisherman in large part because public lands and public waterways in the West made it possible. In Wilderness of Hope Grover recounts his fly-fishing experiences with a strong evocation of place, connecting those experiences to the ongoing national debate over public lands. Because so much of America's public lands are in the Intermountain West, this is where arguments about the use and limits of those lands rage the loudest. And those loudest in the debate often become caricatures: rural ranchers who hate the government; West Coast elites who don't know the West outside Vail, Colorado; and energy and mining companies who extract from once-protected areas. These caricatures obscure the complexity of those who use public lands and what those lands mean to a wider population. Although for Grover fishing is often an "escape" back to wildness, it is also a way to find a home in nature and recalibrate his interactions with other parts of his life as a father, son, husband, and citizen. Grover sees fly fishing on public waterways as a vehicle for interacting with nature that allows humans to inhabit nature rather than destroy or "preserve" it by keeping it entirely separate from human contact. These essays reflect on personal fishing experiences with a strong evocation of place and an attempt to understand humans' relationship with water and public land in the American West.

Wilderness provides a multidisciplinary introduction into the diverse ways in which we make sense of wilderness: how we conceptualise it, experience it, interact with, and imagine it. Drawing upon key theorists, philosophers, and researchers who have contributed important knowledge to the topic, this title argues for a relational and process based notion of the term and understands it as a keystone for the examination of issues from conservation to more-than-human relations. The text is organized around themed chapters discussing the concept of wilderness and its place in the social imagination, wilderness regulation and management, access, travel and tourism, representation in media and arts, and the use of wilderness for education, exploration, play, and therapy, as well as its parcelling out in parks, reserves, or remote "wastelands". The book maps out the historical transformation of the idea of wilderness, highlighting its intersections with notions of nature and wildness and teasing out the implications of these links for theoretical debate. It offers boxes that showcase important recent case studies ranging from the development of adventure travel and eco-tourism to the practice of trekking to the changing role of technology use in the wild. Summaries of key points, further readings, Internet-based resources, short videos, and discussion questions allow readers to grasp the importance of wilderness to wider social, cultural, political, economic, historical and everyday processes. Wilderness is designed for courses and modules on the subject at both postgraduate and undergraduate levels. The book will also assist professional geographers, sociologists, anthropologists, environmental and cultural studies scholars to engage with recent and important literature on this elusive concept.

Writing this book has first and foremost helped me as an individual person to come to terms with things that are happening to me and around me. It has helped me gradually to discover my strengths and weaknesses, my successes and failures. It has also helped me to see how my day-to-day existence can enrich the lives of others by allowing myself to touch them, by extending a helping hand to them in the name of love. It has helped me to see how my life can resonate with the lives of countless others with whom I come into contact as a man of God. It has helped me to discover as a unique person, amongst the millions, or rather billions of God's creations, that my life experiences can help others also to discover his love for us.