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Las estrellas, la nieve, el fuego. Veinticinco años en la Alaska salvaje
En 1947, John Haines (1924-2011) se instala en una cabaña aislada cerca de Richardson, en Alaska, donde permaneció durante más de veinte años llevando una existencia áspera y solitaria. En este libro, publicado en 1977, relata su experiencia: «Aquellos días en el campo, aquellas caminatas con los perros sobre la nieve y la hierba, las largas jornadas de caza, la matanza de los animales y todo lo demás formaban parte de la experiencia más profunda del ser humano en este planeta».
Su condición de poeta tal vez justifique la forma tan vívida en la que están escritas estas memorias. Sin embargo, aunque hay espacio para la reflexión y cierta dosis de melancolía, Haines se centra en capturar la esencia de lo que es vivir aislado en el corazón de la Alaska más salvaje. Según New York Newsday, «si Alaska no hubiera existido, Haines podría haberla inventado».
Su condición de poeta tal vez justifique la forma tan vívida en la que están escritas estas memorias. Sin embargo, aunque hay espacio para la reflexión y cierta dosis de melancolía, Haines se centra en capturar la esencia de lo que es vivir aislado en el corazón de la Alaska más salvaje. Según New York Newsday, «si Alaska no hubiera existido, Haines podría haberla inventado».
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1977
19 people are currently reading
1120 people want to read
About the author
John Meade Haines
37 books19 followersBorn in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1924, John Haines studied at the National Art School, the American University, and the Hans Hoffmann School of Fine Art. The author of more than ten collections of poetry, his recent works include At the End of This Summer: Poems 1948-1954 (Copper Canyon Press, 1997); The Owl in the Mask of the Dreamer (1993); and New Poems 1980-88 (1990), for which he received both the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and the Western States Book Award.
He has also published a book of essays entitled Fables and Distances: New and Selected Essays (1996), and a memoir, The Stars, the Snow, the Fire: Twenty-five Years in the Northern Wilderness (1989).
Haines spent more than twenty years homesteading in Alaska, and has taught at Ohio University, George Washington University, and the University of Cincinnati. Named a Fellow by The Academy of American Poets in 1997, his other honours include the Alaska Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts, two Guggenheim Fellowships, an Amy Lowell Travelling Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Library of Congress. John Haines lives in Helena, Montana.
[source]
He has also published a book of essays entitled Fables and Distances: New and Selected Essays (1996), and a memoir, The Stars, the Snow, the Fire: Twenty-five Years in the Northern Wilderness (1989).
Haines spent more than twenty years homesteading in Alaska, and has taught at Ohio University, George Washington University, and the University of Cincinnati. Named a Fellow by The Academy of American Poets in 1997, his other honours include the Alaska Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts, two Guggenheim Fellowships, an Amy Lowell Travelling Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Library of Congress. John Haines lives in Helena, Montana.
[source]
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 39 reviews
March 19, 2016
Oh boy, this book got me thinking... I mean really thinking hard... like contemplating on things around me for hours. In my first year living in a quiet village and very connected to the mother nature, I guess I kind of needed Haines' insight. Maybe that's why my hubby recommended this book to me so strongly. I could truly relate to what he had to say about all the extraordinary aspects of an ordinary life. (Not that the author's life is really ordinary! I mean he lives in Alaska come on!?!)
QUOTES
P.3 To one who lives in the snow and watches it day by day, it is a book to read. The pages turn as the wind blows; the characters change in meaning, but the language remains the same. It is a shadow language, spoken by the things that have gone by and will come again.
P.5 I have imagined a man who might live as the coldest scholar on earth, who followed each clue in the snow, writing a book as he went. It would be the history of snow, the book of winter. A thousand-year text to be read by a people hunting these hills in a distant time.
P.7 The world may fail us, the markets crash, and the traffic stand still. But with a good axe in hand, a gun, a net, a few traps - life will go on in the old, upstanding ways.
P.15 I learned to read animal sign, the snowmark of foot and tail and wing. In some uncanny and prehuman way it wad like beginning a new language, each detail and accent of which had its special meaning. It led me step by step into a world I seemed to have known once but had forgotten, shadowy and haunted by half-realized images from the past. I found my way there, somehow assured, though alone and separated from all I had grown up with, that I was in my right place, performing the right tasks.
P. 96 I am alone in my thirty-third year, strange to myself and the few people I know. In this immensity of silence and solitude, my childhood seems as distant as the age of mastodons and sloths; yet it is alive in me and in this life I have chosen to live. I am here and nowhere else.
P.104 A drowsy, half-wakeful menace waits for us in the quietness of this world. I have felt it near me while kneeling in the snow, minding a trap on a ridge many miles from home. There, in the cold that gripped my face, in the low, blue light failing around me, and the short day ending, in those familiar and friendly shadows, I was suddenly aware of something that did not care if I lived. Or, as it may be, running the river ice in midwinter: under the sled runners a sudden cracking and buckling that scared the dogs and sent my heart racing. How swiftly the solid bottom of one's life can go.
P. 104 Disappearances, apparitions; few clues, or none at all. Mostly it isn't murder, a punishable crime - the people just vanish. They go away, in sorrow, in pain, in mute astonishment, as of something decided forever. But sometimes you can't be sure, and a thing will happen that remains so unresolved , so strange, that someone will think of it years later; and he will sit there in the dusk and in silence, staring out the window at another world.
QUOTES
P.3 To one who lives in the snow and watches it day by day, it is a book to read. The pages turn as the wind blows; the characters change in meaning, but the language remains the same. It is a shadow language, spoken by the things that have gone by and will come again.
P.5 I have imagined a man who might live as the coldest scholar on earth, who followed each clue in the snow, writing a book as he went. It would be the history of snow, the book of winter. A thousand-year text to be read by a people hunting these hills in a distant time.
P.7 The world may fail us, the markets crash, and the traffic stand still. But with a good axe in hand, a gun, a net, a few traps - life will go on in the old, upstanding ways.
P.15 I learned to read animal sign, the snowmark of foot and tail and wing. In some uncanny and prehuman way it wad like beginning a new language, each detail and accent of which had its special meaning. It led me step by step into a world I seemed to have known once but had forgotten, shadowy and haunted by half-realized images from the past. I found my way there, somehow assured, though alone and separated from all I had grown up with, that I was in my right place, performing the right tasks.
P. 96 I am alone in my thirty-third year, strange to myself and the few people I know. In this immensity of silence and solitude, my childhood seems as distant as the age of mastodons and sloths; yet it is alive in me and in this life I have chosen to live. I am here and nowhere else.
P.104 A drowsy, half-wakeful menace waits for us in the quietness of this world. I have felt it near me while kneeling in the snow, minding a trap on a ridge many miles from home. There, in the cold that gripped my face, in the low, blue light failing around me, and the short day ending, in those familiar and friendly shadows, I was suddenly aware of something that did not care if I lived. Or, as it may be, running the river ice in midwinter: under the sled runners a sudden cracking and buckling that scared the dogs and sent my heart racing. How swiftly the solid bottom of one's life can go.
P. 104 Disappearances, apparitions; few clues, or none at all. Mostly it isn't murder, a punishable crime - the people just vanish. They go away, in sorrow, in pain, in mute astonishment, as of something decided forever. But sometimes you can't be sure, and a thing will happen that remains so unresolved , so strange, that someone will think of it years later; and he will sit there in the dusk and in silence, staring out the window at another world.
April 18, 2012
I came across John Haines while reading William Kittredge's great anthology "The Portable Western Reader." Haines is better known as a poet, and maybe that's why these essays are so vividly written. They represent a period of years from the 1940s to the 1980s during which Haines homesteaded off and on near Richardson, in central Alaska. They are only somewhat reflective and focus instead on capturing the raw experience of living in the woods, along creeks and rivers, through the seasons of the year. As a homesteader, Haines lived off the land, raising his own vegetables, hunting game, and trapping marten, lynx, beaver, and fox. Many of the essays concern hunting and killing animals, and they are written in a matter-of-fact way that may repel some readers. They do, however, capture a point of view toward wildlife that is possible for a man of letters to entertain, and as such they illuminate a set of values that has a long history among people who have lived by hunting and gathering on the frontiers of the world.
For me, the memorable essays in the collection deal with the kind of isolation that the author has chosen to live in. One essay describes a three-day winter journey to check trap lines, cataloguing in detail how he dresses, the gear and food he takes with him, and the one dog that accompanies him. Along the way, he has a close encounter with a grizzly, which highlights the vulnerability of a single man in this remote terrain, and there is the description of overnighting in a cabin, where he is alone with his thoughts as darkness falls early, silence reins, and the cold night sky fills with stars. Another essay is a long account of how the streams and a nearby river gradually freeze over in the autumn and winter. With his poet's eyes and ears, Haines describes how ice forms and the sounds made by flowing water as it freezes, until it is utterly silent under snow.
A few essays describe the men who live in this area, swapping stories about others who have chosen this faraway world to live in alone and make what living they can to keep soul and body together, season after season. Given these lives of isolation, the prevalence of dark and cold, and the recurring theme of death and dying, there is a certain melancholy throughout the book. You put it down at the end with a kind of respect for Haines' clear-eyed vision and sensibilities and certainly his skill as a writer. The simplicity of a life stripped to essentials (work, food, sleep) will have an appeal for some readers who dream of self-sufficiency and getting away from it all. But the romanticism Haines evokes has much to do with a test of character, spirit, and physical stamina. The tough and the lucky survive, but only for as long as the wilderness lets them.
For me, the memorable essays in the collection deal with the kind of isolation that the author has chosen to live in. One essay describes a three-day winter journey to check trap lines, cataloguing in detail how he dresses, the gear and food he takes with him, and the one dog that accompanies him. Along the way, he has a close encounter with a grizzly, which highlights the vulnerability of a single man in this remote terrain, and there is the description of overnighting in a cabin, where he is alone with his thoughts as darkness falls early, silence reins, and the cold night sky fills with stars. Another essay is a long account of how the streams and a nearby river gradually freeze over in the autumn and winter. With his poet's eyes and ears, Haines describes how ice forms and the sounds made by flowing water as it freezes, until it is utterly silent under snow.
A few essays describe the men who live in this area, swapping stories about others who have chosen this faraway world to live in alone and make what living they can to keep soul and body together, season after season. Given these lives of isolation, the prevalence of dark and cold, and the recurring theme of death and dying, there is a certain melancholy throughout the book. You put it down at the end with a kind of respect for Haines' clear-eyed vision and sensibilities and certainly his skill as a writer. The simplicity of a life stripped to essentials (work, food, sleep) will have an appeal for some readers who dream of self-sufficiency and getting away from it all. But the romanticism Haines evokes has much to do with a test of character, spirit, and physical stamina. The tough and the lucky survive, but only for as long as the wilderness lets them.
January 7, 2016
And something happens. It happens slowly, but as surely as the sun comes back each spring and leaves us again in the fall. One more old face has vanished; another, younger and stranger, is in its place. Imperceptibly, the world grows distant, as if one’s sight were failing as he watched. Thoughts, physical movements struggle to hold their places, then give way and reassemble in a different order. We learn to live with spaces and silences we had not know before.
Memory, something we had relied on above everything else. Like a boat untied from the shore, that faculty, too, leaves us: the days blur together, we are borne too far to see. We are alone, confused among shadows; there are no known voices, and we feel around us, probing and insistent, the cold cramp of death. Now sleep is the one possible thing. Night and the earth are waiting.
Memory, something we had relied on above everything else. Like a boat untied from the shore, that faculty, too, leaves us: the days blur together, we are borne too far to see. We are alone, confused among shadows; there are no known voices, and we feel around us, probing and insistent, the cold cramp of death. Now sleep is the one possible thing. Night and the earth are waiting.
July 28, 2024
I could never homestead, much less in the harsh Alaskan wilderness. But I’m glad John Haines did. Haines describes the landscape and challenges and stories vividly, ruminating on themes instead of a chronological narrative of his time there. His skills and abilities to survive are understated, and instead he mostly expresses delight and wonder at nearly every aspect of living there.
With perception and focus —truly *seeing* the world around him—Haines recounts the stories that nature tells. Tracks in the snow; the formation and melting away of ice on the river; the sudden appearance—and disappearance—of bats at his homestead; what had happened with animals before they met their end in his traps or at the end of his rifle. All of it forms the basis of meditation and wonder. So while I’ll never experience the world he describes, his memoir does a fine job of helping us imagine what it was like.
With perception and focus —truly *seeing* the world around him—Haines recounts the stories that nature tells. Tracks in the snow; the formation and melting away of ice on the river; the sudden appearance—and disappearance—of bats at his homestead; what had happened with animals before they met their end in his traps or at the end of his rifle. All of it forms the basis of meditation and wonder. So while I’ll never experience the world he describes, his memoir does a fine job of helping us imagine what it was like.
June 14, 2020
"It is often true that the best things we do in some strange way take place within us long before we come to the ground itself. The physical domain of the country had its counterpart in me. The trails I made led outward into the hills and swamps, but they led inward also. And from the study of things underfoot, and from reading and thinking, came a kind of exploration, myself and the land. In time the two became one in my mind. With the gathering force of an essential thing realizing itself out of early ground, I faced in myself a passionate and tenacious longing—to put away thought forever, and all the trouble it brings, all but the nearest desire, direct and searching. To take the trail and not look back. Whether on foot, on snowshoes or by sled, into the summer hills and their late freezing shadows—a high blaze, a runner track in the snow would show where I had gone. Let the rest of mankind find me if it could."
the first time i ever read this quote was in my freshman year of high school, as an epigraph in krakauer's Into the Wild. now, over five years later, i have finally had the chance to read it in its full, authentic state, and reflect on how these words have singlehandedly shaped the most formative years of my life. coming to this page, and hearing not haines' voice, but my own, reading this quote back to myself as i have time and time again, felt like true homecoming.
i give this 4.5/5 stars because haines, a bright-eyed romantic white man who was drawn to "the last frontier" by its fanciful ruggedness, obviously has a couple dated views that are not quite as dignified as he makes them out to be (imo)........ HOWEVER..... these essays perfectly illustrate what it is like to make and find Home in the middle of nowhere--or in other words, alaska.
the first time i ever read this quote was in my freshman year of high school, as an epigraph in krakauer's Into the Wild. now, over five years later, i have finally had the chance to read it in its full, authentic state, and reflect on how these words have singlehandedly shaped the most formative years of my life. coming to this page, and hearing not haines' voice, but my own, reading this quote back to myself as i have time and time again, felt like true homecoming.
i give this 4.5/5 stars because haines, a bright-eyed romantic white man who was drawn to "the last frontier" by its fanciful ruggedness, obviously has a couple dated views that are not quite as dignified as he makes them out to be (imo)........ HOWEVER..... these essays perfectly illustrate what it is like to make and find Home in the middle of nowhere--or in other words, alaska.
September 1, 2020
当我翻开原著出版于1977年的这本书，女女竟然说听过。可见的确是很有文坛地位的。
阿拉斯加至今都是我心中的圣地。通常这种心向往之的地方，难免会出现网恋奔现的下场 - 去过就逐渐把它忘了，转而关注下一个没到过的彼岸。阿拉斯加真的不同。那里苍茫无际的苔原、远处嬉戏的灰熊一家三口、在森林夹道的溪流上漂流钓虹鳟鱼、夜晚11点天边那缕金色的阳光、崎嶙山路转角突然扑面而来的冰山和静谧如镜的冰湖......在阿拉斯加的每一天，语言都苍白无用。就是这种世间即便迸裂，大自然都在那里静静拥抱你回家的澄澈感觉。
无论如何，和Haines相比我们始终是局外人。他用自己25年在阿拉斯加荒野生存的经历带我们进入“梦幻时间”。一如Herman Melville，我为这些既能在荒蛮中勇猛生存、又能把这一切潇洒记录成诗般著作的优秀灵魂们喝彩。在我的文化传统里，这两者的完美融合似乎没有先例。
和我极爱的“瓦尔登湖”一样，Haines描绘的森林让人神往。一边读，我一边怀念着在美国各地的森林里漫漫走过之路。宾州墨绿的树影叠嶂、太浩湖边倒下的巨木、锡安树下大石的古朴灵气、北加州高耸入云的红杉、亚利桑那州的深山木屋前码好如山的粗木柴和潺潺水声、黄石的硫磺味雾气、伯灵顿陡峭松树林凛冽的清晨6点、哦还有在明州渺无人烟的小径边偶遇的黑熊。。。世界万千色彩，我们也不是非要事业成功，非要有车有房，非要赢在起跑线，非要胜过所有人。也可以Trust fall到大自然的怀抱，倾听的内心声音，更新自我，感悟生命本真的重量。
手机里只有一张在阿拉斯加的照片。其他一切，都已嵌在灵魂里。
阿拉斯加至今都是我心中的圣地。通常这种心向往之的地方，难免会出现网恋奔现的下场 - 去过就逐渐把它忘了，转而关注下一个没到过的彼岸。阿拉斯加真的不同。那里苍茫无际的苔原、远处嬉戏的灰熊一家三口、在森林夹道的溪流上漂流钓虹鳟鱼、夜晚11点天边那缕金色的阳光、崎嶙山路转角突然扑面而来的冰山和静谧如镜的冰湖......在阿拉斯加的每一天，语言都苍白无用。就是这种世间即便迸裂，大自然都在那里静静拥抱你回家的澄澈感觉。
无论如何，和Haines相比我们始终是局外人。他用自己25年在阿拉斯加荒野生存的经历带我们进入“梦幻时间”。一如Herman Melville，我为这些既能在荒蛮中勇猛生存、又能把这一切潇洒记录成诗般著作的优秀灵魂们喝彩。在我的文化传统里，这两者的完美融合似乎没有先例。
和我极爱的“瓦尔登湖”一样，Haines描绘的森林让人神往。一边读，我一边怀念着在美国各地的森林里漫漫走过之路。宾州墨绿的树影叠嶂、太浩湖边倒下的巨木、锡安树下大石的古朴灵气、北加州高耸入云的红杉、亚利桑那州的深山木屋前码好如山的粗木柴和潺潺水声、黄石的硫磺味雾气、伯灵顿陡峭松树林凛冽的清晨6点、哦还有在明州渺无人烟的小径边偶遇的黑熊。。。世界万千色彩，我们也不是非要事业成功，非要有车有房，非要赢在起跑线，非要胜过所有人。也可以Trust fall到大自然的怀抱，倾听的内心声音，更新自我，感悟生命本真的重量。
手机里只有一张在阿拉斯加的照片。其他一切，都已嵌在灵魂里。
December 9, 2020
4,75/5
Looooooved it ! Everything I love in a nature writing book... many very beautiful depictions of nature and lovely lovely writing !
Looooooved it ! Everything I love in a nature writing book... many very beautiful depictions of nature and lovely lovely writing !
March 12, 2023
I read this book under duress (a relative lent it to me and insisted that I would like it, so I felt obliged to read it). That may have been part of why I didn't enjoy it. I'm also not usually a memoir person, and I don't like the terse, Hemingway-esque style that Haines uses. Still, there are moments I enjoyed, especially in the chapter about bats, which I found to be a thoughtful meditation about folklore and the connotations we assign to animals, sometimes unfairly.
My main bone to pick with the book, though, is that every male character, even the most minor, has a name and a detailed description and backstory, but Haines almost always refers to his wife as "my wife" instead of by name (even more creepily, at one point he says that he "had a young wife" who he had brought to Alaska) . She is never described, is given no separate opinions or emotions, and is almost treated as an extension of Haines himself. At one point he says that they "discussed what she had to do while he was gone" as though he was assigning her chores. One wonders what she thought about being left alone in a cabin in the remote Alaskan wilderness doing his assignments while he went out hunting. I suppose the most charitable explanation is that he was protecting her privacy, since he at one point mentions that they got divorced. However, it reads like simple misogyny.
My main bone to pick with the book, though, is that every male character, even the most minor, has a name and a detailed description and backstory, but Haines almost always refers to his wife as "my wife" instead of by name (even more creepily, at one point he says that he "had a young wife" who he had brought to Alaska) . She is never described, is given no separate opinions or emotions, and is almost treated as an extension of Haines himself. At one point he says that they "discussed what she had to do while he was gone" as though he was assigning her chores. One wonders what she thought about being left alone in a cabin in the remote Alaskan wilderness doing his assignments while he went out hunting. I suppose the most charitable explanation is that he was protecting her privacy, since he at one point mentions that they got divorced. However, it reads like simple misogyny.
September 5, 2013
I love that this is called a memoir and it is - but it is a memoir unlike I have any I have ever read. The author simply tells of days - that don’t look extraordinary in many ways - but when he writes them in his quiet, spare prose - they reveal so much in the simple, mundane every day aspects of life in Alaska - the life he has chosen. He reveals also the truth and beauty of nature - and silence - and friendship. It is a most unusual memoir - creating a song that though being played on only one instrument - it seems to bring forth the sound of an orchestra. I am so very glad I read it.
April 4, 2008
One of Alaska's greatest living poets - perhaps one of America's, too.. John Haines uses simple words to convey the most complex ideas. He captures the essence of what it's like to live in the Interior of Alaska - from the first snow of the fall to the first melt of the spring. You can feel the heartbeat of the land in his words, and you'll see what he saw as he penned them. Simply brilliant.
January 9, 2014
From the detail of the daily workload to the poetic of living among shadows, great stories that cover the products of solitude and immersion in nature. A short pleasant read.
April 6, 2021
At times evocative and moving, other times quirky and still other times just obscure, this memoir captures some of the feel of living in Alaska.
Haines’ best moments are telling stories, of encounters with grizzlies, various colorful characters and life as a trapper and self-sufficient homesteader. There are moments when he waxes too philosophic for my tastes and times he misses the boat completely, like his last full chapter where he goes on a disconnected tangent on the history of bats.
However this book is a worthy read because there are moments when you feel like you are there with him as he checks his trap line and heads back to a makeshift cabin, feeds his sled dogs, thaws some moose stew and settles into a long, cold winter’s night.
Haines’ best moments are telling stories, of encounters with grizzlies, various colorful characters and life as a trapper and self-sufficient homesteader. There are moments when he waxes too philosophic for my tastes and times he misses the boat completely, like his last full chapter where he goes on a disconnected tangent on the history of bats.
However this book is a worthy read because there are moments when you feel like you are there with him as he checks his trap line and heads back to a makeshift cabin, feeds his sled dogs, thaws some moose stew and settles into a long, cold winter’s night.
January 18, 2023
I can't praise this book highly enough. John Haines writes beautifully and from a unique sensibility. He wrote such vivid descriptions that his life in Alaska came alive. I almost stopped reading in a couple of places, in an early chapter about animal trapping and in descriptions of hunting. I could never have lived the life he did, and the Alaska he lived in is long gone—so reading the book was a vicarious experience that I found valuable despite my occasional squeamishness. The last four chapters/essays are superb, haunting, gorgeous. This book is going to reverberate in my mind for a long time.
June 15, 2025
Slowly but surely made my way through this book, mostly in two chunks during two summers. I love Haines’ writing style, how he takes small moments and select experiences and weaves them together into a tapestry of his life and experiences in the wilderness. A great read for when you need to be reminded of the beauty in small moments and details.
September 21, 2025
Strange, after 5 marriages, barely a mention of any of these women. I find Haines a man filled with himself and his accomplishments. The women who certainly supported him, cared for him, walked by his side are barely an apostrophe in his story.
I wonder, what of these women? Did they find their own true selves along the way? Did they find lives filled with their own being?
I wonder, what of these women? Did they find their own true selves along the way? Did they find lives filled with their own being?
June 6, 2020
Homesteading outside of Fairbanks for twenty some odd years. Not for the faint of heart. A beautiful memoir of exploits I don’t think I could do.
December 4, 2020
A thinking story. Pondering life and nature in Alaska.
Read
March 10, 2023Preparing for my exilic period
April 8, 2024
Beautiful writing that made me feel like I was there. A way of life I wish I’d had.
May 17, 2011
A very meaningful exercise in the act of observing, Haines's prose, spanning 25 years of homesteading in Alaska, is perhaps the least abstract writing I've encountered about attempting to live amidst and in concert with nature. I came to Haines's text by way of the Fairbanks-based composer John Luther Adams, whose music "...is going inexorably from being about place to becoming place." (The New Yorker, May 12 2008). The connection between Adams and Haines, beyond friendship and shared geography, is clear, as their works are both wholly rooted in place.
Haines's writing, mirroring his life in Alaska, is grounded, purposeful, and pared down to only that which is essential. Haines often speaks of reading one's environment as though it is a book, believing that its narrative holds many of the answers we seek. This connection between text and land is embodied in Haines's writing, which, as much as a document of a life, is also an element of the earth.
Haines's writing, mirroring his life in Alaska, is grounded, purposeful, and pared down to only that which is essential. Haines often speaks of reading one's environment as though it is a book, believing that its narrative holds many of the answers we seek. This connection between text and land is embodied in Haines's writing, which, as much as a document of a life, is also an element of the earth.
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February 17, 2017814.54 H1532s 2000
November 25, 2013
Written in beautiful prose with unending honesty, this narrative captures the ups and downs and raw beauty of a man living mostly alone in Alaska. For 25 years, in small batches here-and-there, he lived in the wild, in the manner of the frontiersman before him, and gave up many of the luxuries that modern life could have afforded him.
This book reads quickly--and Haines' words flow as effortlessly as you might expect those of a poet to. I especially liked the sincerity and genuine curiosity he uses as he approaches the older people he meets as he attempts to learn their trades from them. This book pairs well with Into the Wild, and in fact McCandless references it in his journal.
This book reads quickly--and Haines' words flow as effortlessly as you might expect those of a poet to. I especially liked the sincerity and genuine curiosity he uses as he approaches the older people he meets as he attempts to learn their trades from them. This book pairs well with Into the Wild, and in fact McCandless references it in his journal.
November 14, 2014
I don't have much to add to other Goodreads reviews: Not very often have I enjoyed reading about so little happening. Once or twice, maybe, the author gets carried away and is a little too wordy, a little too digressing in search of putting a deeper meaning into it when there really doesn't need to be one.
And, one more thing: Homesteading in earshot of a major highway, and across the street from a roadhouse tavern, is NOT "the wilderness".
And, one more thing: Homesteading in earshot of a major highway, and across the street from a roadhouse tavern, is NOT "the wilderness".
January 29, 2012
I enjoyed this memoir. John Haines, a poet from the northwest US and Alaska, wrote about his years of living in the Alaskan wilderness. He opens with an essay on hunting and trapping which is rather graphic. He doesn't romanticize trapping and killing of wild animals so be forewarned. However stories about the men who lived in the woods in the 1950's and 60's were great character studies. I also found his essay on ice and ice formation on Alaskan rivers to be an example of good writing.
January 31, 2016
This is possibly my all time favorite book written by Alaskan poet laureate, John Haines. We read this for an Alaskan literature class. Our house was actually just a few miles from Haine's homestead, so I loved reading all the imagery of the wilderness which was quite literally right outside my door. John Haines even dropped by our class (this was 2009) to discuss his book. I found him to be an intimidating but nice enough guy.
July 5, 2007
Some of the cleanest writing I’ve read in a long while. I like the book for its unapologetic honesty and the adventure of Haines’ lifestyle. Less flashy than Rick Bass/Winter, a little more adventurous than Dick Proenneke/One Man’s Wilderness, and a lot grittier than either.
If you like Haines’ poetry, this is a rewarding read.
If you like Haines’ poetry, this is a rewarding read.
January 3, 2014
I read this book every year as winter crawls into my valley in the Southern Appalachians. Its slow, deeply meandering cadence and consideration of things subtle always delights and surprises me with new insights on every reading- as if on cold nights fire flies appear in the sky of a wintering mind.
June 17, 2007
haines is a master at telling the story like it is, without making a single excuse along the way. exquisite writing. if you love honest, clean, lyrical writing you simply have to read this book. by the books end, he had me yearning for alaska.
July 11, 2007
A memoir, sort of, less prose than poetry. Maybe the solitude of 25 years in an Alaskan trapper's cabin allows for those lines to blur. Landscapes, seasons, sights and sounds of inner and outer worlds.
August 26, 2008
This was quite interesting to me, living in a modern society to see someone living literally "off the land" and doing it in such peace and serenity. It painted such vivid pictures in my mind as I read...great writing!
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