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Nuk Tessli: The Life of a Wilderness Dweller (Orca $17.95)
Nuk Tessli means west wind. And it's also Chris Czajkowski's name for her hiking business and the high-altitude lake close to her home--a log shelter cobbled together by her own hands and situated between Nimpo Lake and the southeast corner of Tweedsmuir Provincial Park. Nuk Tessli has accommodation for the guests she guides, mainly in the summer, but for most of the year she is alone--without human company. She must walk twenty miles to reach a road and travel for three days to reach her nearest neighbours on foot. But in Czajkowski's Nuk Tessli: The Life of a Wilderness Dweller (Orca $17.95), drawn partially from her submissions to Morningside, she plays down the isolation of her present location. After all, she says, she can radio for help and be in a hospital in two hours.
Czajkowski gives detailed accounts of the overland journey she undertakes to leave her cabin and go on the lecture circuit. In winter she doesn't carry a tent but overnights in a sleeping bag under a dense clump of balsam. Sometimes she is able to spend the night in an abandoned trapper's cabin.
Czajkowski travels with two dogs, both of them carrying considerable backpacks. Although her life brings her into contact with some lively characters, she is less interested in delineating human beings than animals. These include the dogs necessary to her life and the bears that lurk nearby and wreak havoc on the cabins in her absence. But the book's appeal does not depend entirely on descriptions of animals, natural phenomena and physical feats.
Autobiography is currently one of the most popular literary forms and Czajkowski does not disappoint those seeking to understand the person behind this singular way of life. While she presents autobiographical information somewhat obliquely, her forceful personality emerges quite clearly. For instance, there is abundant evidence of her love of books. Each chapter has a literary epigraph, and when swallows decide to nest in her cabin, they find an ideal home on her bookshelves.
"Securely supported by the toe of the shelf and sandwiched between T.S. Eliot and D.H. Lawrence, they had appropriately picked, for the centre-piece of their future brood's home, Brave New World.";
In one of her closing chapters, Czajkowski addresses the question she is asked repeatedly: Why does she choose to live in the bush? She points to North American cities with their overloaded materialism, stink, noise and stress. Living in such conditions, she argues convincingly, calls for explanation and constitutes real eccentricity! It is easy to understand her fondness for the T.S. Eliot of The Wasteland and Gerontion, and for Aldous Huxley's dystopic vision. 1-55143-133-5 --By Joan Givner
[BCBW SUMMER 1999]
Czajkowski gives detailed accounts of the overland journey she undertakes to leave her cabin and go on the lecture circuit. In winter she doesn't carry a tent but overnights in a sleeping bag under a dense clump of balsam. Sometimes she is able to spend the night in an abandoned trapper's cabin.
Czajkowski travels with two dogs, both of them carrying considerable backpacks. Although her life brings her into contact with some lively characters, she is less interested in delineating human beings than animals. These include the dogs necessary to her life and the bears that lurk nearby and wreak havoc on the cabins in her absence. But the book's appeal does not depend entirely on descriptions of animals, natural phenomena and physical feats.
Autobiography is currently one of the most popular literary forms and Czajkowski does not disappoint those seeking to understand the person behind this singular way of life. While she presents autobiographical information somewhat obliquely, her forceful personality emerges quite clearly. For instance, there is abundant evidence of her love of books. Each chapter has a literary epigraph, and when swallows decide to nest in her cabin, they find an ideal home on her bookshelves.
"Securely supported by the toe of the shelf and sandwiched between T.S. Eliot and D.H. Lawrence, they had appropriately picked, for the centre-piece of their future brood's home, Brave New World.";
In one of her closing chapters, Czajkowski addresses the question she is asked repeatedly: Why does she choose to live in the bush? She points to North American cities with their overloaded materialism, stink, noise and stress. Living in such conditions, she argues convincingly, calls for explanation and constitutes real eccentricity! It is easy to understand her fondness for the T.S. Eliot of The Wasteland and Gerontion, and for Aldous Huxley's dystopic vision. 1-55143-133-5 --By Joan Givner
[BCBW SUMMER 1999]
Submitted on July 9, 2003 in By David.
