Customer Reviews

Not Really an Alaskan Mountain Man

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is an excellent story which is told with a great sense of humor. Doug Fine morphed from New York City, through the American "west", to his rural Alaska living which he describes in the most entertaining manner. Since we share a love of animals, Doug's description of the moose around his cabin had special meaning. His free-spirited little dog, Sunny, is woven into the story leaving me surprised that a petite Golden Retriever mix could survive at all in the Alaskan wilderness, much less love her surroundings so much. Doug's trip to Barrow and beyond on the ice was yet another sensory level for me and perhaps for anyone who read Going to Extremes. Doug makes the ice and the native Americans feel like adventuresome but familiar friends -- it is a matter of focus. Doug's story struck home to the part of me that years ago secretly wished to homestead in the wilderness in Alaska - to live remotely and simply in a beautiful place without population pressures. (In my day dreams I added a dog team and sled training to my daily regimen, though it sounds like human survival would have been more than enough.) Though I worked in Alaska for several summer "field seasons" out of the Anchorage-Palmer area, and have been to Homer and the Kenai Peninsula, I never lived there and remain curious about Alaskan winter.

ARRIGAA!! Journeying with Doug Fine on his many adventures in Alaska in pursuit of becoming "An Alaskan Mountain Man" is a truly wonderful experience. He leaves the safety net of a stable environment and heads for rural Alaska. His purpose was to discover his indigenous roots by learning the skills necessary to survive the subartic winter temperatures, create suitable shelter, and prepare a food supply to sustain him and his dog, Sunny, through the winter months.He is a 'cheechacko', a tenderfoot, who has some harrowing experiences as he attempts to master these skills.
He elevated my heart rate while I anticipated the outcome of some of his adventures and had me laughing out loud as he mocked his foibles. He is a careful observer with an astute ability to give the reader and inside view. Can you just picture him eating his first piece of two-toned muktuk saturated in whale oil off his sword as a kabob? His interaction with the family of harvesters of this newly caught whale was both humorous an insightful.

As a nature lover, I enjoyed seeing the beautiful, pristine land of Alaska through Doug's eyes. His writing flows from his heart as he describes the meadows strewn with bluebells, the meditative silence of the spruce forest, rainbows across Kachemak Bay,and the glaciated peaks that framed the scenes. From woodpeckers to kittiwakes, to moose, to snowshoe hares, he acknowledges their place on this earth and their struggle to survive.

This book was a joy to read. Doug Fine is hilariously funny and an excellent writer. I look forward to reading about more of his adventures. In the end, he proves himself to be a true Alaskan Mountain man, a man unafraid to confront those challenges of growth and disconvery. AARIGAA!!

I ordered this book from Doug after seeing him on a local TV magazine program discussing his book. My husband and I took a vacation of a lifetime last summer by traveling for 3 weeks through Alaska by car and hiking. We left our hearts there and this book brought back wonderful memories. I enjoyed reading about Doug's adventures, especially his experience at Barrow (one place we would have liked to visit). This is a great read for any lovers of the outdoors or who dream of escaping the rat race to come back to nature...

Anyone that loves the outdoors, or Alaska should read this wonderfully written book by Doug Fine. Doug applies a combination of intelligence and humor in recapping some of his personal experiences of living and surviving in the outlands of Alaska. If you ever felt incompetent in dealing with the challenges of the outdoors, you will find yoursel laughing outloud and dreaming of a simpler life in Alaska.
I look forward to reading more from this fun living, intelligent young author.

I've lived in Boston, I've lived in New York. I've lived in the Louisiana Swamps. And when I arrived in the small desert town of Winnemucca, Nevada I suddenly knew that I was home at last. So it was with great delight that I found Doug Fine saying that when he got Alaska he knew he was home.

The differences between here in the desert and the snows of Alaska are significant - temperature being a big one. Or maybe it's not such a big difference. After all, being outside at the middle of the Alaskan winter is not too different than being outside on a 110+ summer day. Both of them make you want to crave the inside of a nice comfortable bar.

What I don't have is the sense of vision, the ability to convey the ironic, the writing style to find hilarity in the middle of catastrophe. ==You really don't have to go to Alaska to get a kick out of his life in a one room cabin, trying to survive the hardest winter since whenever, a three mile walk to school, uphill both ways - you know the story, it's the way its told that makes it a delight.

Doug Fine has given us a collection of essays from his first year or so as an urbanite living in rural Alaska. He groups these around three "steps": finding warmth, obtaining food, and building shelter. I think they're supposed to be funny, along the lines of (say) David Sedaris, and they are indeed intermittently funny. But they need to be funnier to work that way.

In fairness, some of the chapters are not intended to be funny but to be travelogues of a sort. For example, he joins an Inuit family on a whale hunt on the ice and tells us what that's like. I think this was the most successful story because Fine's a good observer and he's willing to make fun of himself along the way.

The least successful story comes at the end, when Fine joins the community in rebuilding a neighbor's house that had burned down. He never quite figures out what the point of this story is, and let's face it, holding up drywall all day doesn't really lend itself to thrilling or humorous narration. It reads more as if, "I've committed to this three steps structure in my book, and so I must talk about building shelter at the end."

As this last point may suggest, Fine doesn't have a lot of material in this book. It's not a good sign when you take several basic ideas (using a chain saw for the first time, joining Inuit on a whale hunt) and split each one across two chapters. Each of these topics needed to be tightened up to fit in a single chapter, with a new essay on a different topic put in the place of the deleted chapter.

I realize that I've been pretty critical here, and I should mention that Fine is a talented writer, and the book is a very pleasant read despite its weaknesses. In addition, Fine comes across as a very likable guy - - and that's important in a book like this because you're essentially along for the ride with him.

Doug Fine's later book, "Farewell, My Subaru" is a much more refined and edited text. He is not a Mountain Man. Obviously assembled from numerous essays on heating a drafty cabin, pursuing game with a Remington 870 shotgun, and characterization of the 'locals' operating on "Homer Time" it's a bit choppy. I have to admit, though, that the section on traveling to Barrow and freezing through the harvesting of a whale with the native population was worth picking up the book (half price). Read it after "Farewell, My Subaru".

Bought this after reading Mr Fine's second book (I guess I tend to read backwards in an author's collection!), as I enjoyed it so much. This one is not as entertaing as Farewell, My Subaru. I think the story was good, but many parts seemed drawn out a bit much.

I am always intrigued by stories of people who leave civilization behind to try their hands at becoming one with nature. On one hand the book was filled with stories of this nature, mishaps with chainsaws, survival on a snowy camping trip gone array, a battle across the frozen tundra on a malfunctioning snowmobile, etc. These stories would pull me into Doug's frustrations, or fears, making me wonder what it would feel like if I too was in his shoes, and then before I knew it the chapter was over and the experience had abruptly ended.

I knew before I started the book that it was a compilation of essays from Doug's time in Alaska and wouldn't read like a novel, but I still felt cheated at the end of certain sections, wanting to know more, feeling as if I had been brought into an experience, and then dropped too soon. Don't get me wrong, Doug is a fine writer, and the book offers a great glimpse into what it takes to survive in Alaska, so I guess I have to sum it up as a quick read that's simply lacking depth.

Author tries to be funny with each line. Gets boring and predictable very quickly. Maybe worth reading during the long cold Alaska winter, but probably not even then could it keep you awake. I would give it a zero star if availible.