Wednesday, August 3, 1994 - North Shore News - 17

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liderness living

hard but rewardin

Barbara Black
BOOK REVIEW

Wilderness Mother, The
Chronicie of a Modern Pioneer,
Deannz Kawatski, Whitecap
Books, 194 pp., paper
USED to think camping
was “roughing it.” Then !
read Deanna Kawatski’s
account of giving birth in a
shack in the middle of the
wilderness with nothing more
than an assuring husband
and a chorus of loons -—.in
the 1980s, yet.

Living in an uninhabited valley
with no electricity or running
water and growing your own food
is truly roughing it. But, as
Kawatski proves in her book
Wilderness Mother, the rewards
of all the quotidian labors of a rus-
tic life are great.

At the age of 28, Kawatski
takes a fire-lookout job at Bob
Quinn Lake in northwestern B.C.
Clearly a lover of nature and soli-
tude, Kawatski basks in the
panorama afforded by her hut’s
23 windows. She writes:

“A near constant wind held the
bugs at bay. The shack shuddered
from its power and inside, the
linoleum floor lifted from blasts
that exceeded 45 miles per hour.
At times the entire landscape van-
ished as the building was
wrapped in a cocoon of mist.”

Alone in the wilderness, living
in a fire tower attached! precari-

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ously by cables to a mountaintop,
amidst woods populated with
wolves, moose, grizzlies and lynx,
Kawatski’s greatest fear is of the
rumored hermit who lives nearby.

Three weeks into her posting,
she meets the hermit —- young
man dressed in a mink and otter
cape, blue jeans and a marten
cap. One vear later she marries
him (he presents a moose antler
engagement ring). And that’s
where the homesteading adven-
ture begins.

The couple settle on leased
land in B.C.’s Ningunsaw Valley,
120 miles outside of Stewart. At
first Kawatski marvels at the
opportunity to escape urban exis-
tence and “sink roots in a wilder-
ness hath forbidding and enchant-
ing.” Within days, however, she
realizes how the simplest daily
tasks, far from the conveniences
of urban amenities, can be almost
insurmountable.

Her husband, Jay, and she sub-
sist primarily on local foods, veg-
etables and fruit grown in their
garden or harvested from the
nearby woods, and game caught
in the surrounding mountains.
Water has to be hauled from a
nearby creek. As winter
approaches, Kawatski consumes
books on pregnancy in prepara-
tion for the birth of her first child
in summer.

The labor begins after a hike
up a 50-degree slope with a rise
of 200 feet. Her water breaks and
the mosquitoes come in “scream-
ing masses.”

Kawaltski strikes a balance
between relating the beauty of the
event and the stomach-churning
details of a wilderness birth. The
result of the 12-hour labor is a
healthy girl.

That combination of attention
to natural beauty and a certain
candidness about rural life is what
makes Kawatski’s book so engag-

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ing. And the dedication Kawatski
shows toward her children, their “~
imaginative play together and
home education, is admirable.

Her 13-year homesteading Sife
and marriage come to a sad end.
Some of this sadness seems to find
its way into the last few pages of
the book where the writing loses
its inspiration. It is hard to believe
that the man who toiled so hard
with Kawatski declares he had
learnt nothing from her ali those
years, for Kawatski's perseverance
and earthy wisdom shine through
the pages of this book.

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