Because the long, hard winter caused scarcity of firewood and food, a poor Indian boy and his animal friends journey to the lodge of the Great Bear to release the chinook.

50th anniversary edition of a perennial best seller. Tales from the oral tradition of the Indians in the Pacific Northwest.

A finalist for the 1995 Governor General's Literary Award for English-language non-fiction Winner of the Mountain Environment and Culture Award at the 1995 Banff Mountain Book Festival Leaning on the Wind is a love song of the west, sung to the tune of the wild chinook wind. Sid Marty skilfully weaves together the prehistory of Alberta with the experiences of First Nations, miners, early homesteaders and his own family. At the centre of his tale is the Marty homestead, located in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Sid looks back through generations of his family and celebrates the feats of wild creatures and wild westerners. The past comes alive in these pages, but so does the present, where you will meet cowboy poets, bull riders, sailplane pilots, desperate chicken farmers, curmudgeonly broncos, a homicidal cow elk, some dubious politicians and several fierce defenders of the earth. Humour and sardonic wit abound, along with abundant affection for the western earth and the people who depend on its bounties and experience its extremes of wind, frost and drought. A western classic, Leaning on the Wind is as evocative today as when it was first published in 1995.

Mr. Andy tells Thad and Annie some tales about the spectacular effects of chinooks, hot winter winds that suddenly spring up and cause dramatic changes in the temperature.