May 3, 1993
It was an act of bravado that prompted 19-year-old Fromm to leave college and accept a winter job with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game in 1990. His assignment was to check daily on two million salmon eggs planted in a channel between the Selway River and Indian Creek. The nearest road was 40 miles from camp; by mid-November the only access was by snowmobile. Fromm had dreamed of being a ``mountain man''--a la Jim Bridger or Jedidiah Smith--but he was a tenderfoot, hardly prepared to spend seven months alone with his dog Boone in the wilderness. Fromm gives an engaging account of that winter; his job took about 15 minutes a day, so he had to combat loneliness and fill the hours. He learned to hunt, to tan leather, to preserve meat. There were occasional parties with hunting groups, brief visits by the game wardens, a few narrow escapes. A fine tale of adventure and self-sufficiency.
May 1, 1993
What do you get when you drop into the remote, icy wilderness of Idaho an impulsive tenderfoot who remanticizes the "mountain man" ethos? Death or a darn good story. After narrowly eluding the former, Fromm delivers the latter. His job--chipping ice out of a channel--only took a few minutes a day, so in addition to enduring bitter cold and extreme hardship, he had to face an oppressive amount of "free time." Hiking, hunting, reading, and cooking helped pass it, but boredom drove him to stupid, perilous outings. Fromm had sporadic contact with backwoods hunters and eventually became a true mountain man scornful of the rangers zipping out of the woods to return to desk jobs. This is a good example of "new nature writing" typified by the straight-ahead narratives of Rick Bass rather than the more literary styles of Barry Lopez or Annie Dillard. Antihunting activists and the squeamish may dislike parts of this book, but it is still recommended for most nature and adventure fans from high school age up.-- Jim Dwyer, California State Univ. at Chico
Copyright 1993 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
April 1, 1994
YA-An absorbing personal account. Disenchanted with college, 20-year-old Fromm accepted a job with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game and set off to spend the winter in the middle of the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness. For 15 minutes a day, 7 days a week, he checked salmon eggs planted in the channel between the Selway River and Indian Creek, and made sure ice was cleared from the end of it. The closest plowed road was 40 miles away and the closest person 60 miles. The fruit of his labors was about 20 fish returning to Indian Creek out of the 2 1/2 million he watched over. Entertaining nonfiction.-Pamela B. Rearden, Centreville Regional Library, Fairfax County, VA