Why a Booktrail?
2000s: The haunting relationship between father and son against the raw rugged mountains of British Columbia and Saskatchewan.
The Mountain Can Wait
What you need to know before your trail
Tom Berry is a single father and a loner – quite at home and at peace with his wilderness home. He’s struggled since the death of his wife to raise his sons with the tough love and respect he shows the mountains. his forestry business has taught him all about strength and perseverance and the need for man to respect his surroundings. His relationship with his sons may not be as easy however.
When Curtis is involved in a tragic accident and then flees the scene, Tom goes off hunting once again but this time for his son, Whether he can really track him down and reach him this time however is another question.
Travel Guide
Set in a stunning but scarred Canadian landscape, the landscape is at one with the story unfolding and the characters involved in it.
The story takes us from Whistler to Quesnel, Vanderhof, Fort St James and Takla Lake. A significant place is Aguarish Island near Vancouver island and the ferry ride to that place. The place names – Crossbow Creek, McCleod River and Black Pond reveal the close relationship of man and earth.
But the landscape here is something more of a persona experience too for the author not only evokes but recreates the raw and rugged life as a worker on the lumber plantations of the Canadian Pacific Ranges. This is a lifestyle and setting unfamiliar to many but the details from the author bring this to life –
“The logging camp in a dusty, rocky clearing, was small and functional; five long boxcars couple together in a row, elevated on concrete blocks”
Accustomed to waiting the planters dropped their bags to the ground, sat against them, and smoked.
As well as the lumber workers however this is the story of the lesser known planters and the competition they face working on the mountains. The main threat however is the climate and the weather where a life in the mountains shapes everything in daily life –
“Weatherman says it only going to keep getting hotter and drier, we’d like you to move to fire hours”
The planters are known to smoke which is a fire hazard and so ‘if seedlings were handled in the middle of the day when it’s baking” they will dry out. Weather here more than anywhere dictates the rhythm of life and work.
The landscape which dictates and shapes everything in this place –
The uniformity of this place had a way of lulling a person into something like a dream
Land and people as one.
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Twitter: @SarahLeipciger
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