Yearning Wild: Exploring the Last Frontier and the Landscape of the Heart Book

In 1968, Glendon Brunk moved to Alaska to pursue his childhood dream of living in the wilds of the last American frontier. He built his own log cabin, hunted and fished, worked with the native Inuit, and became one of the world's top sled-dog racers. But he also watched the land he loved being destroyed by the tools of the very society he represented. Disgusted and distraught, Brunk left Alaska and hitchhiked across Africa, Asia, and North America, where he witnessed continuing destruction from the hands of humans. He returned to Alaska, committed to fight to save what is left of the wilderness. This personal story explores the deeply American contradictions that make up modern Alaska and questions our cultural inability to both love and protect the land.

Publishers Weekly

This engaging memoir by a professor of creative writing and environmental studies at Prescott College tells the story of a young man growing up and a land becoming tamed. Brunk, who drove west the moment his high school graduation ceremony ended, eventually arrives in the wilds of Alaska in 1968. Newly married and ready to be a "real" man, he lives his "Jack London notion of life": hunting, fishing, building his own log cabin and beginning to race sled dogs. Over the next 12 years, Brunk becomes one of the world's top sled dog racers; he experiences fatherhood and later divorce. But after winning the world championship of sled dog racing in 1980, Brunk sells his dog team and leaves Alaska's shrinking wilderness behind, heeding a voice that "kept prodding, kept insisting that something else needed doing." The nomadic Brunk then embarks on a seven-year odyssey around Africa, South America and Asia. He thrives on the "open, reckless engagement with the world," spends his 40th birthday camped out in the Serengeti, "in love with life, with the myriad possibilities of it all," and eventually comes to embrace simplicity and challenge Western notions of success. Finally, largely in response to a plea from his daughter, Brunk decides to return to North America and "life without bears," and to commit himself to protecting the Alaskan wilderness he loves. Although occasionally unpolished, at its best Brunk's prose is direct and heartfelt. This is a stirring memoir from one man who heard the call of the wild and answered it. (Nov.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.