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Summary
Summary
Hildebrand writes of landscapes in dispute: Native Alaskan groups are pitted against each other over oil development, Hmong emigrants jostle locals in a public hunting ground, farmers battle a formidable company town and city hall. Nature itself is also in flux as timber wolves and sandhill cranes reclaim lost ground and a marine biologist gauges the effect of an invading species on previously undisturbed areas.
A Northern Front reflects the day-by-day disappearance of wild places and the ever-changing face of the American landscape. Hildebrand's characters are unforgettable, and his stories gracefully capture the spirit of all people who care deeply about the land.
Author Notes
John Hildebrand's nonfiction has appeared in Harper's Magazine, Audubon, Outside, Sports Illustrated, Harrowsmith, and The Missouri Review. He is the author of Mapping the Farm: The Chronicle of a Family (Minnesota Historical Society Press) and Reading the River: A Voyage Down the Yukon. He teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and has recently built a cabin in northern Wisconsin.
Reviews (2)
Kirkus Review
The deepest northern woods or most barren Alaskan wilderness vibrate with life under award-winning journalist Hildebrand's discerning eye. It may be the rainwater oozing up from boggy Minnesota farmland under a visitor's footsteps. Or the "heart-shaped" tracks of white-tailed deer in the Wisconsin forest. Or the shimmering shapes of sockeye salmon heading upstream under a canoe on the Yukon. In 18 old and new essays, Hildebrand (Mapping the Farm, 1995, etc.) couples eerily beautiful natural landscapes with a sense of their fragility. The writing is heartfelt, but there's no preachiness. For the most part, Hildebrand lets nature do the talking. True, the older essays can feel dated. "Exile's Song" paints an Ireland beset with economic despair and a fleeing population--obviously written before a high-tech invasion transformed Ireland into the "Celtic Tiger" of the last decade. In other cases, though, even the older essays carry a powerful emotional kick. In "Snow on the Mountains," Hildebrand returns to a remote cabin he and his young bride built in 1972 along Alaska's Stampede Trail. The marriage dissolved within a few years (after a premature baby died in childbirth), and, returning in 1976, the author finds a strange mixture of regret and solace in the achingly beautiful morning that breaks around his isolation. Hildebrand brings a serenity to the wilderness, and also a sense of literary history. He leads us to Hemingway's Big Two-Hearted River on Michigan's Upper Peninsula, and through the same Minnesota prairie that Thoreau, dying of tuberculosis, walked on his final journey in 1843. On California's Pacific Coast Highway, he mourns our passing from a country of travel-hungry Jack Kerouacs to sedentary Garrison Keillors, now willingly tethered to our "hometowns." Indeed, whether uncovering Laotian exiles in Minnesota or ancient Indians in the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge, Hildebrand proves as adept at unearthing the compelling human story as he is at penetrating nature's subtleties. Literate prose and a naturalist's sensibility: a better tour guide would be hard to imagine. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
While watching marine biologists at work on a research vessel off southeastern Alaska, Hildebrand asked the chief scientist to explain the point of his research. We chase stories, the scientist answered simply. Hildebrand admired the reply, and offers this collection of essays as a literary equivalent. The pieces in the book, written over a 20-year period, present glimpses of landscapes and the people who populate them. The essays are extremely varied: in one, the author accompanies Hmong immigrants deer hunting in Wisconsin; in another, he tries to follow the course of the Big Two-Hearted River using Hemingway's classic story as a guide. (Hemingway took some liberties with the Michigan landscape.) Touching Bottom draws a melancholy yet lovely parallel between a wounded mallard and the author's dissolved marriage. At one point Hildebrand laments, Perhaps we have lost the language to describe a landscape beyond the terminology of real estate brokers. Not true, if this collection is any example. --Rebecca Maksel Copyright 2005 Booklist
Table of Contents
| Preface | p. ix |
| Coming Home | p. 3 |
| A Northern Front | p. 22 |
| The Appraisal | p. 43 |
| Wading the Big Two-Hearted | p. 64 |
| Snow on the Mountains | p. 75 |
| Touching Bottom | p. 83 |
| Beyond Whales | p. 91 |
| Fables | p. 103 |
| Fences | p. 116 |
| Exile's Song | p. 133 |
| Dogs Playing Poker | p. 143 |
| Deer in the Tree | p. 161 |
| Wolf at the Door | p. 174 |
| Wolf Redux | p. 183 |
| Looking for Home | p. 188 |
| On Being Lost | p. 192 |
| In a Far Country | p. 200 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 207 |
