Way Out Here: Modern Life in Ice-Age Alaska Leo, Richard

Alaska's Susitna Valley, bordering Denali National Park, is a bitterly cold and wild place in winter, a riotous jungle in summer, and teeming year round with big game and small. In this vibrant account, Leo describes life over the last 15 years with his family on a Susitna Valley homestead, accessible only by dogsled or foot. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Living in the Alaska wilds where survival equals foresight. Leo clearly has absorbed essential lessons from that powerful terrain. After 15 years with his three boys and a dozen dogs in gargantuan Susitna Valley, he concludes that the real frontier "is found not in the individual's interaction with wilderness, but in community." He finds that the isolation of life with a six-mile driveway to his solar-paneled cabin is solved with self-reliance: oil lamps, wood stoves, canine "garbage disposals," brooms and manually sharpened knives. But this follow up to Leo's well-received Edges of the Earth goes beyond practicalities to observations of Zen simplicities and the life of the mind. His interaction with community comes with 920 people scattered in the huge valley, 250 in his nearest town of Trapper Creek. His sled dogs become his touchstone to the nonhuman world and he talks to them daily?"I only talk to my mother once a week." His fascinating chapter on dogs reveals the intimacy he shares with their ultimate wilderness as they wolf-howl among their own pack. In winter, Leo uses the dogs to trek a full day to the post office. Immersion in long distances intensifies perspectives and the power of intuition, demanding control over fears (more people have been killed by domestic dogs in Alaska since 1975 than by bears since 1906). Leo concludes in his evocative memoir that hope for a peaceful heart has little to do with wild Alaska, Tibetan caves or corporate suites but "in the way we see where we are."
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

North of Anchorage's urban sprawl and south of majestic Denali, Leo makes his home in the fertile Susitna River Valley, so far from his neighbors that it's a six-mile hike just to get the mail. Bears and berry picking, the dogs who pull his sled, the migrating geese, the aurora above deep snow--these are the features of everyday life for Leo and his family. Yet far from being a romanticized memoir, Leo's complex but conversational book explores the moral, ethical, and political questions attendant on his chosen life and, so doing, provokes us to examine our own lives in similar detail. Never polemical, always engaging, Leo's is a voice of conscience for those who love the wild but recognize that their presence changes it. Patricia Monaghan

After considerable success with his previous book, Edges of the Earth (LJ 9/1/91), Leo continues to explore the Alaskan wilderness. His 15 years' experience in the North provide the basis for a variety of entertaining stories that are flowing and highly descriptive. While Leo focuses on life with his wife and three sons and emphasizes the importance of land conservation, his book still maintains a broad scope, addressing such topics as homesteading activities, child rearing, climbing expeditions, and dog-sled travel. As a result, he offers an educational perspective on Alaska even as he expounds upon the joys and privileges of living there. Readers are sure to enjoy this work.?Jo-Anne Mary Benson, Osgoode, Ontario
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.