The Winter of '79

The Winter of ’79 is the true story of one particular winter season that spanned the gap from 1979 to 1980 with a lot of nasty weather in between. We know about it because Kate, alone on a mountain top with no phone and no one over the age of one to talk to, wrote letters to her mamasan in Hawaii. Her mom kept the letters. Kate also penned a journal. Between the two written sources and more than one hundred original photographs, a person can get a pretty good feel for what an Alaskan winter in an isolated and remote setting can be like. On top of their remote mountain, Kate and baby Atwood are holding down the fort and keeping the home fires burning, while Tim is commuting to a job in Kenai. His daily trips through woods on an antique snow-machine are inherently dangerous, and he is battling constant sickness. With luck, he will make it home each night. Suddenly, living in a winter wilderness is not as fun as they had imagined it would be. Will this winter of ’79 be the deal breaker to their Jack London and Ralph Waldo Emerson-inspired Transcendental hybrid odyssey? As a work of "creative non-fiction," the the events are true, however the characters and the towns of Footprint and Sleeping Moose are fictitious. Letters home have been included in this "Winter" volume and photographs (more than 100) as well as journal entries illustrate the feelings of a homesteading woman in remote isolation. Because this pioneering adventure takes place shortly before the invention of silicon-chip cell-phones, solar panels and “quad” ATVs revolutionized our world, millennial readers will be able to vicariously experience rustic living with outmoded tools, while seniors who have lived their own pre-tech lives may find amusement in the solutions arrived at by the "cheechako" greenhorns. For pure recreation, Part One is a perfect weekend diversion into raw nature and unanticipated transportation misadventures. Part Two (The Winter of ’79) may not feel as easy to digest as readers share in Kate’s cabin fever and concern for her family's survival. On a Utopian quest, these pioneers have naïvely pitted their idealism against the searing realities of our world as it really is. Eventually, one truth or the other must give way.