Building Alaskan Dreams

Book excerpt: Adventure, hardship, heartbreak and ultimate victory are woven through this true story of one man's modern day Alaskan homesteading experience. After a series of disastrous events leads to a bitter divorce and destroys a prosperous mid-Western farming life, Travis hits the road in an old pick-up truck. Aimless and aching, homeless for several years, arrested in a string of small towns in the Deep South for being a vagrant and other petty 'crimes,' he finds himself on a downward slide until he reads of Alaskan homesteading in a 'Mother Earth News' magazine, and begins to dream of his own land. That dream comes to life in the shadow of Alaskan mountain splendor, where he creates a working homestead from little more than thin air and his own rugged determination and guts. Face-to-face encounters with bears, surviving 60-below zero winters in a tiny dirt-floored lean-to, learning to use dogs as draft animals to get the homestead work done - these are just a few of the challenges he must overcome to carve out a life in harsh sub-arctic Alaska. Interviews, original diary entries, photos and illustrations are an important part of the historical record of this homestead saga.