Ecologist Anne LaBastille created the life that many people dream about. When she and her husband divorced, she needed a place to live. Through luck and perseverance, she found the ideal spot: a 20-acre parcel of land in the Adirondack mountains, where she built the cozy, primitive log cabin that became her permanent home. Miles from the nearest town, LaBastille had to depend on her wits, ingenuity, and the help of generous neighbors for her survival. In precise, poetic language, she chronicles her adventures on Black Bear Lake, capturing the power of the landscape, the rhythms of the...

This is the first careful account I have ever read of the death of one of the myriad types of creation. It covers the last twenty years not of an individual life but of a form of life. These marvelous birds deserve at the very least an obituary, and Anne LaBastille has given them a fine and moving one. Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature"

The biography of an Adirondack legend whose tireless efforts are credited with much of today's preservation policies in the Adirondacks.