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Book Review of Woodswoman: Young Ecologist Meets Challenge Living Alone Adirondack Wilderness

Woodswoman: Young Ecologist Meets Challenge Living Alone Adirondack Wilderness
cyndil62 avatar reviewed Dedicated ecologist! on + 30 more book reviews


This was an enlightening look at the life of one woman who lived in a cabin in the Adirondack Mountains next to a lake following her divorce. This beautiful woman did most of the construction on her 12x12 cabin except for raising the walls and putting on the roof. She also had help with the plumbing and gas lines. She lived with no electricity, only propane tanks and kerosene lights. No bathroom as we know it, only an outhouse and then later a rigged up toilet inside. She had to enter and leave the cabin by boat and the closest town was miles away.
Anne LaBastille is a dedicated ecologist who loved nature and her cabin in the woods. To say that she 'found herself' in the wilderness is to reduce Anne's story to the most simple. Her life consisted of hard physical labor and loneliness, but this was the life she chose.
She built this first cabin around 1965, so in places the book is dated but still of great interest to those of us who feel a connection with nature. I give the book a 5 star rating not because of the writing itself but because of Anne's story which is an inspiration!