Indian Creek Chronicles: A Winter Alone in the Wilderness, by Pete Fromm, Picador.

Readers have shown interest in the role of wilderness in coming of age stories. Jon Krakauer’s “Into the Wild” has been appearing on the New York Times bestselling hardcover and then paperback lists for over a decade. While the character of Christopher Johnson McCandless evokes empathy, the tragic Alaska journey unites the disenchanted and escapist with wilderness. Krakauer's moving book does deserve much of its acclaim, yet the protagonist is not a poster boy for a healthy relationship with wilderness. Look elsewhere.

Blood but no Tragedy

In Pete Fromm’s tale of a solitary wilderness sojourn, he is not running away; he’s diving into the adventure. There is blood but no tragedy. Indian Creek Chronicles is a story about a young man who falls in love with the mystique of Jim Bridger and Jeremiah Johnson and thinks it could be cool to spend the winter alone guarding salmon eggs in an Idaho snowed-in wilderness. The paltry $200 monthly salary doesn’t dissuade Fromm. He is naive about his invincibility, but he is rational. The crystalline honesty and humor of the wiser Fromm looking back on his decision to leave his University of Montana scholarship to spend the seven coldest months of the year alone in a canvas tent high in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness is not to be missed it’s the next best thing to getting out to enjoy winter.

The first-person account brings the reader to the clarity that comes often, once on a winter night when the stars radiate from a dark sky over a herd of elk huffing up a terrestrial cloud. The reader laughs with Fromm when he describes the sleeping dilemma of where to place his nose — out of the sleeping bag exposed to the cold night temperatures in the tent — or tucked within assaulted by a warm body reeking with a genuine mountain-man tang.  Fromm chronicles a goofy somewhat irresponsible kid, falling in love with a place and growing up. His love is imbued with respect and an awareness of his maturing wilderness ethic, which seems too authentic to be merely a metaphor for learning to understand his relationship to the world.

West and Midwest

The West has claimed this writer who now resides in Montana, but Fromm never abandons his Midwest sensibilities. Readers from the heartland will recognize the soul of this Wisconsinite, crying as he reads a letter from his little brother, hiking dozens of miles in sub-zero temperatures at the chance of seeing family, and relishing the gift of cheese sent by his aunt. Fromm was never broken, yet the wilderness made him whole.

This review was first published in the WI Sierra Club's Muir View.