North of Iskut

In 1971 Tor Forsberg was twenty-three and her life was at a crossroads. Having returned to Watson Lake in the Yukon after five years in Montreal, she found her art career at a standstill and the party life of a small town much too alluring. Then one day after a particularly wild night, she bumped into Lynch Callison, the father of an old boyfriend. Lynch invited her to his lodge at the LV ranch to "get her head straight". The next morning she found herself bumping along Highway 37 in an old pickup, heading south to Iskut. Tor soon fell in love with the bush and vowed to create a life in the wilds of Northern BC. She stayed in a cabin on the LV Ranch that summer, where she worked on paintings for an art show in Vancouver and practised her wilderness skills, which she soon came to realise were limited. But Tor was determined to learn about life in the bush, and everyone she met was happy to guide her -- and let her make some mistakes along the way. The following year she staked some land and built a log cabin. Tor lived at the cabin year round with a menagerie of dogs, cats, a weasel named Casper and four packhorses. In the years that followed Tor learned to hunt and trap, skin beaver, field dress moose, make bannock and beaver stew and scent a grizzly on the wind. She also learned to live with herself in the pure solitude of life in the wilderness. This is a funny and heart-warming story of a young woman's quest to discover herself, her spirit and her connection with nature.