The Stars, the Snow, the Fire: Twenty-Five Years in the Alaska Wilderness [Paperback]

John Meade Haines (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2000

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This book is a collection of previously published essays (in Harper's magazine, among others) by poet/nature essayist Haines on life in the Alaskan wilderness. Each of the chapters can be read as an independent essay, but Haines's pervading theme is of a wilderness that is both unchanging and changed greatly over the centuries. Snow, the trees, and the animals are records of what has happened before. The book's philosophical underpinnings are much more subtle than Sam Wright's Koviashuvick: A Time and Place of Joy ( LJ 3/15/89). Haines's descriptions of the wilderness are easier to picture, and the reader feels the experience more personally. Recommended for general audiences.
- Mary J. Nickum, Fish and Wildlife Reference Svce., Bethesda, Md.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

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. -- Sierra

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. -- New York Times Book Review

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Product Details

• Paperback: 182 pages
• Publisher: Graywolf Press (March 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 155597306X
• ISBN-13: 978-1555973063
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #80,652 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #94 in Books > Science & Math > Nature & Ecology > Essays

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essays by a poet homesteading in the Alaskan wilderness. . ., December 4, 2003

By 

Ronald Scheer "rockysquirrel" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Stars, the Snow, the Fire: Twenty-Five Years in the Alaska Wilderness (Paperback)

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.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars exquisite language, January 21, 2003

By 

D. E. MCIVOR "puma35" (Carson City, NV) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Stars, the Snow, the Fire: Twenty-Five Years in the Alaska Wilderness (Paperback)

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.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book is prose at its best!, December 9, 2002

By 

Brooks Onley (Pocomoke City, MD USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Stars, the Snow, the Fire: Twenty-Five Years in the Alaska Wilderness (Paperback)

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.