Cabin: An Alaska Wilderness Dream

I like and admire this book for its honesty and accountability. Eric Wade is part Aldo Leopold, part Jeremiah Johnson, and part Maya Angelou, out there in the Alaska wilderness, in the cabin he built himself. "Not another in the universe like this," he says. He's a poet with an axe, a teacher on a river, forever learning and sharing. Alaska is richer for him being there, and for giving us this fine story.xa0 -xa0Kim Heacox, author of Jimmy Bluefeather and the Only KayakA wonderful, addictive love song to the Alaskan wilderness, a book that will transport you as close to its sublime beauty and visceral truths as you could possibly get without making the journey yourself. As a young man in pursuit of a boyhood dream and to prove himself only to himself, Eric Wade set out with an axe and a file to build a cabin in the woods.xa0 Every summer for thirty years he has journeyed back with his wife and sons into the unpeopled heart of that last, great wilderness and every year he has found himself healthier - in mind and body - coming outxa0than going in. He would live longer, he writes,if he lived out there.xa0 Provided, of course, that it didn't kill him. Eric Wade's book about a cabin and a place and an idea of place is both metaphysical and yet reassuringly grounded in the nitty, gritty of survival: don't getxa0lost, advises Eric. Take warm clothes. And never underestimate the mosquitoes! But listen to the river also, it being the freshest sound of life. Written in prose as clear and luminous as the waters of that beloved river, Eric Wade's"Cabin" is a captivating, authentic and ultimately humbling story about our place in the world and the things that matter. -xa0Charles Rangeley-Wilson, author of Silver ShoalsFor much of the last 30 years, one of the tiny boats in vast Alaska carried a good natured school teacher up and down hundreds of miles of untracked river,xa0 xa0fora life that matched his daydreams of individuality, resourcefulness and independence. And here's the thing: he found it.xa0That knowledge was hard won, and Eric Wade's new book "Cabin" takes us along with him step-by-step on a most remarkable journey. We're at his side while he wrestles both recalcitrant outboard motors and painful self-doubts. Was he foolish to think he could master the physical and mental demands of building a cabin and living in wilderness? (Yes, a little.) Was he lucky to be snatched up by rescue helicopter during his heart attack? (Oh yeah.) Was he unfairly taxing wife and family by cheerleading them along on his lifetime dream? (Sure, but they seemed ultimately capable and willing.)xa0Were the rich experiences and insights it yielded worth it? (Very much so.)xa0Wade's narrative is clean and straightforward, a tale of decades spent learning,enjoying and sharing a rare gift. While few who read "Cabin" will ever attempt anything remotely as grand, reading this fine tale lets what he learned reflect on our own lives and inform our own understanding of what's worth striving for.xa0xa0The world is a better place when people like Eric, wife Doylanne and their family push at the limits of "civilized" and expand our understanding of what's possible. Even better, he's now shared that experience with us.xa0 -xa0Howard Weaver, writer and editor at the Anchorage Daily News, where he worked on both of the paper's two Pulitzer Prize winning series.xa0The Great American Dream: Go west, stake a homestead,build a cabin, live off the land. The Alaska Dream is a variant: Move to a wilderness lake, build a log cabin, live off the land, wildlife the only neighbors.Since the time of the great gold rushes of the early twentieth century, people have been infected by the Dream. Some have succeeded, many others have failed.In the modern era, with free or open land hard to find, the Dream has become even harder to fulfill but still possible for those with perseverance and grit.Back in 1987, Eric Wade pursued his dream, staking land on a bluff overlooking a river that flows north from the central Alaska Range. Two years later he built a cabin thus beginning his decades long odyssey. Although he never moved his family full-time to the Bush he spent weeks every summer sharing the wilderness with his wife, growing children, and friends.In this book Wade tells the story of the sweat, work, and sacrifice that went into fulfilling his version of the Alaska Dream. Wade's honest, candid account of the effort needed to sustain a Bush cabin likely will encourage others as well as discourage many more. A dream is often just that, a dream, the work involved to make it a reality often overlooked. This book belongs on the shelf of anyone contemplating finding their own version of the Alaska Dream.xa0 -xa0Tom Walker, author of Wild Shots: A Photographer's Life in Alaska and We Live in the Alaskan Bush "Cabin" is the soulful story of teacher turned student, a man bent on immersing himself in wilderness ways. Hopelessly drawn to a peopleless place hundreds of road and river miles from home, Wade takes us along as he learns to read the moods of the river, falls in love with a place where bears and wolves are neighbors,stakes his land, and tackles the ridiculously hard work of carving a dream out of the land. Wade's message summed up in one sentence is this: "Find the place you love." -xa0Debra McKinney, author of Beyond the Bear