Quoted By:
Cache Lake Country - Life in the North Woods
by John J. Rowlands
From the NYT Book Review:
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... Rowlands went into the Canadian wilderness, “in the Snow Goose Lake Country,” up the Manitoupeepagee River, as a timber cruiser. As he traveled the country, he came to a lake that gripped his imagination. “I have seen maybe a thousand northern lakes, and they all look alike in many ways, but there was something different about that little lake that held me hard.” He built a log cabin on the lake, which he named Cache Lake, and his story unfolds in the wilderness with his friends, Chief Tibeash, a Cree Indian, and Henry Kane, an illustrator whose work appears in the book.
The book is loosely organized by seasons. Here’s the opening to the May chapter:
“When May comes to the north country it reminds me of a fawn walking out of the woods alone for the first time, wide-eyed and uncertain about what to do next. A timid month is May, and not sure of itself, for though the days may be warm, the nights are often sharp with frost and sometimes windowpane ice comes on the coves. Once in a while we have a snow flurry – “robin snow,” we call it.”
“Cache Lake Country” is a gem for many reasons – a simple narrative, the ways in which it conveys the work-a-day joys and exertions of life in the wilderness, the woodscraft techniques it illustrates, and the slow and pleasurable way in which the soul of a serene man is revealed. In the introduction to the edition that was given to me (The Countryman Press), Verlyn Klinkenborg, not a mean writer himself, calls it the best book ever written."
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Highly recommended.
