American Wild: Explorations from the Grand Canyon to the Arctic Ocean

Torn between two “soulscapes”—the canyon country and Alaska—the author has roamed both for twenty– five years. En route he suffered snowstorms, boat– flips, heat, injury, bobcat tamales, upset raptors, charging grizzlies, the Park Service, heartbreak, hungry mosquitos, and honeymooners from abroad. Above all, American Wild speaks of one man’s desire to see natural wealth and our stories about it preserved.

An anthropologist by training, Michael Engelhard has worked as apotter, wrangler, army officer, ship’s cook, university teacher, outdoor instructor, and wilderness guide. Among his homes he has counted an oven– hot bunkhouse in Moab, an unheated sauna near the Arctic Circle, ahouseboat parked on aranch in British Columbia, and ablue– tarp hut shaped like aTootsie Roll on the banks of the Rio Grande. His greatest accomplishment has been a1,000-mile solo traverse of Alaska’s Arctic, from the Canadian border to the Bering Strait. He is the author of Redrock Almanac and Where the Rain Children Sleep and the editor of four collections of nature writing. His most recent book is Ice Bear, acultural history of that Arctic icon. Still moving often, he lives in Fairbanks, Alaska again.