A wildlife biologist's journey of discovery through Montana's wilderness As young men, John Fraley and Terry McCoy were kindred spirits, drawn to Montana’s most remote, rugged, wild places. Tragically, one of them died young, his wilderness dreams cut short. The other went on to a forty-year career studying fish and furbearers in the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex. My Wilderness Life chronicles John Fraley’s lifelong love of all places wild and his obsession with uncovering what happened on the August 1974 morning when Terry McCoy’s airplane crashed in what would become the Welcome Creek Wilderness. Join Fraley on a frantic search to find his friend, and also on epic treks to traverse an impassable river canyon, snorkel with pure westslope cutthroat trout, retrace the footsteps of conservation icon Bud Moore, track lynx and mountain lions across the Great Bear Wilderness in winter, hike 42 miles through the Bob in a single day, and much more. At turns hilarious and heartbreaking, My Wilderness Life reveals how one man’s unfulfilled dreams can inspire another’s adventures. Wilderness risks and rewards come alive in first-hand accounts of daring escapades, solo treks, and a few foolhardy misadventures. An inside glimpse of the life of a fisheries biologist in the backcountry. Amply illustrated with 100 black-and-white photographs.

Follow author John Fraley as he traces the lives and times of past and present heroes of the Bob Marshall Wilderness, from old-timers like Joe Murphy, to Smoke Elser, and on to the present. Over the past century, these heroes have ridden, packed, and hiked from one end of the Bob to the other, and they’ve helped make the wilderness what it is today. You’ll ride along on horse and mule treks and wrecks, and discover the sport of trout wrangling. You’ll meet the fluorescent hunter, White River Sue, and the black-clad backpacker. You’ll battle packrats, fish-eating deer, tricky bears, and a tree-hugging criminal. Sit back and read about a dog rescue, smokejumper adventures, kids raised in the wilderness, and the first study of grizzlies in the Bob. Witness a tense moose-lassoing rodeo, and meet a backcountry rooster named Bob Marshall, the first live chicken to attempt a traverse of the Bob. The heroes in this book have ridden and hiked hundreds of thousands of miles through the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex. Now, come along with them and celebrate their contributions, their challenges, and their fun times.

Doris Ashley left Iowa and came to Montana as the frontier era came to a close and the hard transition to the modern West began. In 1925, already a widow at the age of twenty-four, she took a job as “cheap help” in Glacier National Park and thus began a lifelong affair with Montana’s landscape, wildlife, and people. Doris soon met the love of her life, native son Dan Huffine, another park worker with an abiding love for the region. Together, they shared many adventures over the next sixty years, helping to shape the character of northwest Montana and participating in the growth of Glacier Park on both sides of the Continental Divide. Between them, the Huffines shared stints as backcountry park ranger, driver of the classic red tour buses in the park, and cook for the crew that did the perilous work surveying the famous Going-to-the-Sun Road. The couple operated tourist camps along the Glacier Park boundary and became co-proprietors of the Huffine Montana Museum. Many people considered the couple endearingly eccentric, and for good reason, as they kept skunks, badgers, coyotes, bears, a mountain goat, and a beaver as pets. The Huffines were also world-class raconteurs, and enjoyed telling their tales later in life to author John Fraley, who shared their love of the outdoors and of Glacier Park. Using many hours of tape recordings, numerous journals, and a great deal of research, Fraley has pieced together the story of Doris’s early life in Iowa, her fateful meeting with Dan, and their love story, which is also very much a work story—a tale of building a life together while at the same time helping to shape the “Crown of the Continent” region.

The North, Middle, and South Forks of the Flathead River drain some of the wildest country in Montana, including Glacier National Park and the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex. In Rangers, Trappers, and Trailblazers, John Fraley recounts the true adventures of people who earned their living among the mountains and along the cold, clear rivers in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Here are the stories of the intrepid Glacier Park Ranger Clyde Fauley and his young family using a cable bucket to reach their isolated cabin across the Middle Fork, trapper Slim Link’s fateful meeting with a grizzly bear in the deep woods of the North Fork, and the life and times of Henry Thol, “the ranger’s ranger,” who happily snowshoed hundreds of miles through deep snows and minus-40 cold to patrol the South Fork wilderness. Tragedies and near-misses abound: a fatal shootout, tangles with bears and packrats, a devastating train wreck, and a missing airplane. But these are balanced with tales of courage, endurance, and remarkable personal achievement. Fraley tells all in intriguing detail wrested from primary sources.

As young men, John Fraley and Terry McCoy were kindred spirits, drawn to Montana's most remote, rugged, wild places. Tragically, one of them died young, his wilderness dreams cut short. The other went on to a forty-year career studying fish and furbearers in the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex. My Wilderness Life tells of John Fraley's life-long love of all places wild, and his obsession with uncovering what happened in August 1974 when Terry McCoy's airplane crashed in what would become the Welcome Creek Wilderness. Join Fraley on a frantic search to find his friend, and on epic treks to traverse an impassable river canyon, snorkel with pure westslope cutthroat trout, retrace the footsteps of conservation icon Bud Moore, track lynx and mountain lions across the Great Bear Wilderness in winter, hike 42 miles through the Bob in a single day, and much more. At turns hilarious and heartbreaking, My Wilderness Life reveals how one man's unfulfilled dreams can inspire another's adventures.

Looking for adventure and continuing a process of self-discovery, Janisse Ray has repeatedly set out to immerse herself in wildness, to be wild, and to learn what wildness can teach us. From overwintering with monarch butterflies in Mexico to counting birds in Belize, the stories in Wild Spectacle capture her luckiest moments—ones of heart-pounding amazement, discovery of romance, and moving toward living more wisely. In Ray’s worst moments she crosses boundaries to encounter danger and embrace sadness. Anchored firmly in two places Ray has called home—Montana and southern Georgia—the sixteen essays here span a landscape from Alaska to Central America, connecting common elements in the ecosystems of people and place. One of her abiding griefs is that she has missed the sights of explorers like Bartram, Sacagawea, and Carver: flocks of passenger pigeons, routes of wolves, herds of bison. She craves a wilder world and documents encounters that are rare in a time of disappearing habitat, declining biodiversity, and a world too slowly coming to terms with climate change. In an age of increasingly virtual, urban life, Ray embraces the intentionality of trying to be a better person balanced with seeking out natural spectacle, abundance, and less trammeled environments. She questions what it means to travel into the wild as a woman, speculates on the impacts of ecotourism and travel in general, questions assumptions about eating from the land, and appeals to future generations to make substantive change. Wild Spectacle explores our first home, the wild earth, and invites us to question its known and unknown beauties and curiosities.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The remarkable true story of a man who lived alone in the woods of Maine for 27 years, making this dream a reality—not out of anger at the world, but simply because he preferred to live on his own. “A meditation on solitude, wildness and survival.” —The Wall Street Journal In 1986, a shy and intelligent twenty-year-old named Christopher Knight left his home in Massachusetts, drove to Maine, and disappeared into the forest. He would not have a conversation with another human being until nearly three decades later, when he was arrested for stealing food. Living in a tent even through brutal winters, he had survived by his wits and courage, developing ingenious ways to store edibles and water, and to avoid freezing to death. He broke into nearby cottages for food, clothing, reading material, and other provisions, taking only what he needed but terrifying a community never able to solve the mysterious burglaries. Based on extensive interviews with Knight himself, this is a vividly detailed account of his secluded life—why did he leave? what did he learn?—as well as the challenges he has faced since returning to the world. It is a gripping story of survival that asks fundamental questions about solitude, community, and what makes a good life, and a deeply moving portrait of a man who was determined to live his own way, and succeeded.