There’s a new book out, with Alaskan rivers playing the starring role.
Edward Abbey, who never much liked Alaska, called it “our biggest, buggiest, boggiest state.” To others, the state has been a cure for despair. When Michael Engelhard moved to Fairbanks more than three decades ago, he was a cheechako, a subarctic tenderfoot. Gathering skills and experiences the hard way, he attained “Sourdough” status while realizing there would always be moreto learn, see, and do in the land of midnight sun and auroras.
En route, Engelhard suffered frostbite, stubborn yaks, grizzly charges, trophy hunters, cold-water immersion, heartbreak, incontinent raptors, one pesky squirrel, and honeymooners from abroad. He tried to rescue a raven and explored Arctic dunes and a glacier’s blue heart, and his own as he mingled with caribou on their epicjourneys.
Michael Engelhard is the award-winning author of books that include Ice Bear, a cultural history of an iconic animal; the collection of canyon essays No Walk in the Park; and Arctic Traverse, his memoir of a thousand-mile solo trek from Canada’s Yukon border to the Bering Strait. Trained as an anthropologist, he worked for twenty-five years as an outdoor educator and wilderness guide.
By Michael Engelhard, Hancock House Publishers, $24.95; www.michaelengelhard.com / engelhardm@gmail.com
Praise for Michael Engelhard
“Engelhard not only heeds the call of the wild, but also provides eloquent descriptions of its everdiminishing decibel level.” —LAWRENCE MILLMAN, author of The Last Speaker of Bear
“Full of humor and humility about the human condition. This is Alaska as only someone who knows it deeply can give us—a deliciously readable encounter with the place beyond the myths.” —BATHSHEBA DEMUTH, author of The Floating Coast
“Bound to become a new classic of the outdoors.” —BILL STREEVER, bestselling author of Cold
“A compelling account of life on the frozen edge.” —GLORIA DICKIE, author of Eight Bears