A GREAT READ

“In the fall of 1978 I packed everything I thought would be useful into my Toyota Land Cruiser and drove north to Alaska. I came to a land I had never seen to find something I wasn’t even sure existed: a wilderness cabin to use for a year or more to live, think, relax, read, and write.”

So begins the best book I’ve read so far this year, “The Alaskan Retreater’s Notebook: One Man’s Journey Into the Alaskan Wilderness” by my old friend Ray Ordorica.  If that name rings a bell it’s because you’ve read his meticulously-researched work in Gun Tests, American Rifleman, Gun Digest and many other venues.

Ray found a tiny old cabin that had been built and then abandoned by the US Army, fixed it up, and for three years lived there on game meat, the bounty of his trapline, and the proceeds of his superb articles and photography.  He found peace and happiness. He makes you feel his love for the wild things, like Cookie, the fox that becomes more his friend than his pet.

The book is a treasure trove of helpful hints and “life hacks” for wilderness existence.  The gun advice, of course, is worth the price of the book by itself, but it’s really only a small part of this particular reading experience.

My favorite parts were the excerpts from the journal he kept during those years.  When he talks about surviving in deep cold (read: colder than fifty below zero Fahrenheit), you can just about feel it. Halfway through that segment I felt an urge to huddle under some blankets while I read the rest of it.

Simply a great read.  “Five stars!”

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