Falling to Earth

A stirring memoir about finding home in an off-grid cabin in the north, and a gorgeous meditation on how to live intentionally, by the Taylor Prize-winning author of Lands of Lost Borders. Too steep by a few degrees, and you burn up from atmospheric friction. Too shallow, and you bounce back into space, never to return. But a close pass at just the right slant and speed can nudge a life out of one orbit into another. At 8:43 am on January 18, 2000, a rock approximately the size of a small truck hurtled through space and collided with a frozen lake near Atlin, a five-hundred-person town on the edge of the Alaskan border. The conditions that frigid morning were perfect, and the rock would become one of the most pristine meteorite samples scientists have ever collected, containing the building blocks of life itself. Fifteen years later, Kate Harris landed in the exact same spot. Training to be an astrobiologist, Harris’s head was in the stars and her heart was restless. She was intent on travelling to the most alien environments she could find, exploring the potential for biology on other worlds and chasing her dream to follow a meteorite’s flight path in reverse, and leave Earth behind. But life and fate had other plans. When Harris stumbles upon Atlin, a town hidden in the shadow of a glacier, she falls for its wild beauty and eclectic, close-knit community. Then she shocks herself by falling further, this time for her best friend, a woman also named Kate, who doesn’t blink when Harris suggests they move to a cabin in the woods with no electricity or running water. In the stillness, Harris finds her most thrilling adventure yet. Blending memoir, philosophy, and exquisite nature writing, Falling to Earth is a love story about seeking what can only be found by spending time getting to know a person and a place. As she tells the story of living off-grid for more than a decade, Harris reveals the paradox at the heart of any individual journey: only community makes life fully possible.