Full of humor and humility about the human condition.
Backpacking was his first love, for the sense of self-sufficiency and independence it provides..
Engelhard is no slouch either when it comes to walking.
Rivers have been a constant in them, the sinews connecting highpoints and low points, outlier and main events, as they do Alaska\'s elevation extremes.
The writings in between span thirty-three years, the most formative decades of this author\'s life.
This collection opens with an essay about the highest point in the state and finishes with one about one of its lowest, at the continent\'s northern edge.
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 epic journeys.
En route, Michael Engelhard suffered frostbite, stubborn yaks, grizzly charges, trophy hunters, cold-water immersion, heartbreak, incontinent raptors, one pesky squirrel, and honeymooners from abroad.
Gathering skills and experiences the hard way, he attained Sourdough status while realizing there would always be more to learn, see, and do in the land of midnight sun and auroras.
When the author moved to Fairbanks more than three decades ago, he was a cheechako, a subarctic tenderfoot.
To others, it has been a cure for despair. - BATHSHEBA DEMUTH, author of The Floating Coast Edward Abbey, who never much liked Alaska, called it our biggest, buggiest, boggiest state.
This is Alaska as only someone who knows it deeply can give us-a deliciously readable encounter with the place beyond the myths.
Full of humor and humility about the human condition
