In 2013 my wife, Jeanne, and I, she in her late sixties, I in my early seventies, set out to fulfill our long held dream of living in the woods for a year. Before leaving our home in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, I contacted the editors of Tempo, the monthly news magazine in the Town of Lac Brome, to enquire whether they would be interested in receiving reports of our progress in the endeavour. They said, “Yes.” This book is based on those articles.

My original intention was to produce a work echoing the objectives of Thoreau who, in addition to describing his daily life in his chosen wilderness, commented on the mores and politics of his time in his Walden. However, each time that I penned such a commentary, I realized that it detracted from the essence of our experience. The reaction to the Tempo articles proved that the unfolding of the tale of our daily lives was all that was required to engender intense interest and comment. Thus this memoir has to do exclusively with living in the woods.

Review

How do you start a frozen chainsaw? It is February in Northern Canada and you are running out of wood, what do you do? How do you keep the hole in the lake open so that you can draw water in winter? What makes the best outhouse? How do you survive in the woods if you are in your 70’s? What’s it like to give up the modern world? Why would a lawyer spend 3 years in the bush? All these questions and more are answered in David Marler’s wonderful memoire of his and his wife Jeanne’s 3 years in a cabin north of La Tuque in Quebec. The book is filled with the details of the ordinary things that you have to do to live and even survive in such circumstances. But like Moby Dick, this book is written on two levels. This book is both an adventure story and also a spiritual story. A spiritual story with a twist. It is written from the perspective of a 70 + year old lawyer who joins his life partner in a dream that had not been fulfilled when they were younger. Like Moby Dick, you can read this book in two ways. It is an adventure filled with how-to details about how you make a good life in the bush. You will learn how to build a cabin, choose the ideal snowmobile, cook on a wood stove, heat with wood but you will also be inspired to consider your unfulfilled dreams.