I don’t usually read books about how to do anything but this one came recommended by a reliable source.
This Toronto writer and outdoors person became obsessed with the fatal attack on two people in Algonquian Park in 1991 and mingles her investigation with autobiography in this memoir. With extensive experience and multiple contacts, she details the life of bears, moose and coyotes, with their imagined adventures, thoughts, fights, and musings. She attributes human-like thought processes to bears and shows great respect for their intelligence.
Along the way, mixed in, is her personal story of losing her father to cancer and dealing with melanoma herself. I can’t resist commenting on the common advice to avoid sun exposure to prevent the development of melanoma, when most melanomas develop in areas well covered by clothes, unlike the seldom-fatal squamous cell carcinoma , as I discussed in Medicine Outside the Box, and hers is associated with a genetic mutation. I suspect that her extensive efforts to avoid exposure to sunlight are unwarranted.
I have encountered black bears on many occasions, usually while fishing in Ontario’s backwoods and seldom felt threatened, always yielding territory at some distance.
The writing flows smoothly but sometimes deviates to unrelated reflections on life more generically, but is a good education for anyone interested in an outdoor life.
4/5
Thanks, Rhynda
The Passionate Reader 