Stars, the Snow, the Fire: Twenty-Five Years in the Alaska Wilderness

Washington Post Book World
The Haines memoir comes out of a quarter of a century spent in a cabin on a homestead amid the tundra meadows and taiga in the hills 60 miles up the Tanana River from Fairbanks, Alaska. It was a place and a life in which essentials ruled, an existence as near to that half-mythic thing we celebrate as the frontier experience as could be found anywhere in the 20th century. Haines was a trapper and a hunter, cutting trails into the wilderness, building trapline cabins in which to hole up, selling pelts he had cured himself from animals he had skinned himself, eating the meat he shot, his human contacts so rare that every encounter and every conversation could be remembered in exquisite detail. . . . Haines is a poet who crafts each sentence piece by piece as if he were building a harpsichordslowly, carefully, each word examined meticulously for rightness before being slid into place.


New York Times Book Review
Such a life may not be possible again. So it is good that a writer of Mr. Hainess rare vision and poetic eloquence lived this life, and good that he has shared it.


Sierra
As a painter and one of our country's foremost poets, Haines has done more than his share to help preserve the nature he loves. Many people have gone into the wilderness and been inspired; only a handful have emerged with the enviable ability of a John Haines to enrich us with first-rate stories about how-and how deeply-they lived.


Book Description
In this wilderness classic, the quintessential Alaskan frontiersman relates his experiences from over twenty years as a homesteader. As New York Newsday has said of his work, If Alaska had not existed, Haines might well have invented it.


About the Author
John Haines has received many honors, including an American Academy of Arts and Letters award in literature, and a Fellowship of The Academy of American Poets for distinguished poetic achievement. He is also the author of several poetry collections, including The Owl in the Mask of the Dreamer.


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The Haines memoir comes out of a quarter of a century spent in a cabin on a homestead amid the tundra meadows and taiga in the hills 60 miles up the Tanana River from Fairbanks, Alaska. It was a place and a life in which essentials ruled, an existence as near to that half-mythic thing we celebrate as the 'frontier' experience' as could be found anywhere in the 20th century. Haines was a trapper and a hunter, cutting trails into the wilderness, building trapline cabins in which to hole up, selling pelts he had cured himself from animals he had skinned himself, eating the meat he shot, his human contacts so rare that every encounter and every conversation could be remembered in exquisite detail. Haines is a poet who crafts each sentence piece by piece as if he were building a harpsicord-slowly, carefully, each word examined meticulously for rightness before being slid into place.


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