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

I came across John Haines while reading William Kittredge's great anthology "The Portable Western Reader." Haines is better known as a poet, and maybe that's why these essays are so vividly written. They represent a period of years from the 1940s to the 1980s during which Haines homesteaded off and on near Richardson, in central Alaska. They are only somewhat reflective and focus instead on capturing the raw experience of living in the woods, along creeks and rivers, through the seasons of the year. As a homesteader, Haines lived off the land, raising his own vegetables, hunting game, and trapping marten, lynx, beaver, and fox. Many of the essays concern hunting and killing animals, and they are written in a matter-of-fact way that may repel some readers. They do, however, capture a point of view toward wildlife that is possible for a man of letters to entertain, and as such they illuminate a set of values that has a long history among people who have lived by hunting and gathering on the frontiers of the world.For me, the memorable essays in the collection deal with the kind of isolation that the author has chosen to live in. One essay describes a three-day winter journey to check trap lines, cataloguing in detail how he dresses, the gear and food he takes with him, and the one dog that accompanies him. Along the way, he has a close encounter with a grizzly, which highlights the vulnerability of a single man in this remote terrain, and there is the description of overnighting in a cabin, where he is alone with his thoughts as darkness falls early, silence reins, and the cold night sky fills with stars. Another essay is a long account of how the streams and a nearby river gradually freeze over in the autumn and winter. With his poet's eyes and ears, Haines describes how ice forms and the sounds made by flowing water as it freezes, until it is utterly silent under snow.A few essays describe the men who live in this area, swapping stories about others who have chosen this faraway world to live in alone and make what living they can to keep soul and body together, season after season. Given these lives of isolation, the prevalence of dark and cold, and the recurring theme of death and dying, there is a certain melancholy throughout the book. You put it down at the end with a kind of respect for Haines' clear-eyed vision and sensibilities and certainly his skill as a writer. The simplicity of a life stripped to essentials (work, food, sleep) will have an appeal for some readers who dream of self-sufficiency and getting away from it all. But the romanticism Haines evokes has much to do with a test of character, spirit, and physical stamina. The tough and the lucky survive, but only for as long as the wilderness lets them.

The writing in this book is simply gorgeous. What a gift when a poet can be convinced to write prose, because each word is selected and crafted and inserted in each sentence as if its value were immeasurable. My only dismay at the end of this book was to discover that Mr. Haines is not a prolific writer (at least of books). Fewer and fewer people will have the view of the world that this author had-as a homesteader and trapper. We are blessed that he has shared this account of life at its most raw and simplest elements.

Haines is best known as a poet, and you can see it here--the ideas and descriptions are spare and powerful. He gets right down to flesh and bone, the essences of things: the people he's met, the traps set, stories heard, the bone-cold loneliness of the place, it's all right here to be read, as if everything superfluous has been chipped away and all we have left is the experience in itself, what the land has told the writer. For anyone who wants to see what a master can do with the English language, or who wants a glimpse of a land and a way of life the likes of which few will ever see again, here's your ticket.

This collection of essays is a set of ruminations on nature and the role people play in nature. Based on over 20 years of homesteading in Alaska, Haines ranges from concrete subjects such as trapping to more abstract matters such as the way ice forms in a river or snow falls in the woods. There are two features that stand out. First, this is essay writing that verges on poetry. The writing is spare and carefully chiseled and conveys a sense of the north country that is stunning. Second, unlike many nature writes, Haines views man as part of the environment in an unsentimental but powerful light. Haines is troubled by the need to kill animals for their fur, but he also views this as a part of nature. Haines is not as famous as writers such as Barry Lopez or Annie Dillard (perhaps because most of his opus is poetry), but there is no doubt he is a nature writer on par with the best.

I just discovered John Haines, as I am planning a vacation in Alaska and I am interested in the literature and poetry that is native to AK. Mr. Haines is very deep and real, and yet he seems to be able to tap into that shadow stuff that we all carry with us. Much of what he writes is initially disturbing, yet it is so real that I found it compelling enough to keep reading.It is almost like going to a Jungian therapist! If your willing to go deeper and not afraid of the shadows this book is well-worth exploring. His understanding of the natural world as a place devoid of our human judgements and associations is acutely genuine.