****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
When it comes to Alaska, people in the Lower 48 have no idea what life is like here. Half of them are sure we are ‘just like everywhere else’ and the rest believe Alaska is the “Land of the Midnight Sun,” which has six months of darkness followed instantly by six months of unbroken light, where penguins roam freely and Eskimos live in igloos. In reality, Alaska is like a very small town on a very long street in the middle of nowhere. Anchorage, for all intents and purposes, is on the “edge of the wilderness.” If you do not believe that, go to the 8600 block of 4th Avenue. (There is no 8600 block; the city ends at the 8500 block.)LETTERS FROM ALASKA offers – for the outsider – a unique view of Alaska. Bill Hauser has spent half a century in the wild as a fish biologist, fisherman, hunter and outdoorsman. In his LETTERS he travels vicariously to all parts of the state – Arctic tundra to rainforest and the wind-swept Aleutians to the thick forests of the Interior. He has ‘been there and done that’ when it comes to bear watching, tracking Dall sheep, foraging for moose and following caribou herds, fishing for king salmon, bottom fishing for halibut, and going after the elusive Dolly Varden. The book takes you on safaris into the wilderness, snow machining on the Iditarod Trail and backpacking on remote vistas of which Alaska has many. But the book is more than a travelogue, it is an in-depth, on the spot, examination of the flora and fauna of the northland – and highly educational for those who use who rarely go beyond the 8500 block in Anchorage.What is particularly interesting about this book is Hauser offers a glimpse of an Alaska that is now gone. The early days of being a sportsman, a pack on your back and a topographic map in your hand, are gone forever. Today you can make phone calls from the top of Mt, Denali, track your passage through a dense forest on Google Maps, visually zero-in on that lake where you want to camp tonight, and order that pizza where you want to stop on the way home after a TOUGH hike in the wilderness. LETTERS FROM ALASKA is a snapshot of the past, a history of what Alaska was and will never be again.
