A gem! This book touched my soul and took me to a place of open skies and wild places. It gets you closer to the writer and her sense of her place ( and our place) in nature, with all the struggles, paradoxes and challenges that brings. But it also inspires, and has helped reconfirm my commitment to live more in tune with my community, nature and my own values.

Like so many readers I love Proulx, but this is a bit of a disappointment, a jumble of parts hastily put together. Worth reading for the little bit of insight you get into Proulx's life (if you are a fan of hers) but disappointing when this leads nowhere. A little bit "Who do you think you are?", a bigger bit "Grand Designs", with some "Nature watch" thrown in for good measure. Not a bad book, but we are used to greatness from Annie Proulx.

A pristine acreage, many acreages has been forced upon its very nature, its verity, a project authored by a vain, nonsensical and seemingly absent-minded and paradoxically minutiae driven writer, Annie Proulx. It is a wind wasted assemblage of paper fathered by the forests that ring our odd writer out. Thoreau was unable to do it and here is a point of reference: From my: "The Rogue Henry David Thoreau Excerpt: What sort of evil madman goes to the American woods and builds himself an English cabin that is made out in plaster and shingles? It goes against the very grain (pun intended) of the all-American, throw-it-up, log cabin which is entirely more conducive to the sounds and smells of nature pouring through its ill-fitted logs. How quaint this English cabin, wrong on so many levels. Perhaps our man Thoreau was an English spy, plotting to overthrow the Stars and Bars with his army of muskrats, turtles and butterflies. Thoreau eventually got it, Annie Proulx didn't and still doesn't. A failed project is destined to fail again unless you admit it, woman-up. You'll always have "The Shipping News" right?