It's a personal story where the writer questions her own desires in life, but also experiences an adventure with her partner, that pushes at the edges of what they thought was possible.
During graduate school, as she conducted experiments on the peculiarly misshapen beaks of chickadees, ornithologist Caroline Van Hemert began to feel stifled in the isolated, sterile environment of the lab. Worried that she was losing her passion for the scientific research she once loved, she was compelled to experience wildness again, to be guided by the sounds of birds and to follow the trails of animals.
In March of 2012 she and her husband set off on a 4,000-mile wilderness journey from the Pacific rainforest to the Alaskan Arctic. Travelling by rowboat, ski, foot, raft and canoe, they explored northern…
A page-turning memoir about a young woman's grueling, revelatory summers working alone in a remote lookout tower and her eyewitness account of the increasingly unpredictable nature of wildfire in the Canadian north.
While growing up in Peace River, Alberta, Trina Moyles heard many stories of Lookout Observers--strange, eccentric types who spent five-month summers alone, climbing 100-foot high towers and watching for signs of fire in the surrounding boreal forest. How could you isolate yourself for that long? she wondered. "I could never do it," she told herself. Craving a deeper sense of purpose, she left northern Alberta to pursue a…
This book is about the search for self that many of us experience in our 20s -- a breaking away from the ideas of who we are that are passed down by family members, and aren't always serving us as we grow into our own identities. The author handles this eloquently and through the process of an amazing physical feat.
A young woman follows winter across five continents on a physical and spiritual journey that tests her body and soul, in this transformative memoir, full of heart and courage, that speaks to the adventurousness in all of us. Steph Jagger had always been a force of nature. Dissatisfied with the passive, limited roles she saw for women growing up, she emulated the men in her life-chasing success, climbing the corporate ladder, ticking the boxes, playing by the rules of a masculine ideal. She was accomplished. She was living "The Dream." But it wasn't her dream. Then the universe caught her…
Blood Sweat Tears is a short story collection from 26 women+ hikers and runners about the experience of being in a female body on trail. This group of intrepid and vulnerable athletes/writers talk periods, boob sweat, and ugly crying. The trail is a place for healing, and can show us what we are made of---but it's always us doing the hard work.
