I bought this book a million years ago, hoping it would be like the book I wrote about yesterday – a beautiful tale about living in the wilderness.

And it is.

It’s also a hilarious look back as a tenderfoot who gets in over his head. Pete Fromm was a college kid, on a swimming scholarship in Montana¹ while he takes courses that will earn him a degree in wildlife biology.² His roommate is a hunter who has worked for the park service³ and who is devouring the portion of the library devoted to tales from mountain men.⁴ Fromm, who hiked and camped as a kid (as all kids did in those days), gets hooked on the books, too, and after a camping trip with his roommate and friends, starts putting together his own hunting kit, imagining himself to be a modern mountain man.

That summer, as he is sitting on the lifeguard chair at the pool, a girl approaches and tells him how her roommate, who is also a wildlife major, had accepted an overwinter job with the Idaho Fish & Game, caring for wild salmon eggs – but now her friend has run off with a boyfriend and Idaho Fish & Game is desperately looking for someone to take up the gig which begins in 2 weeks. Suddenly the combination of wildlife biology, mountain man mythology, and – I suspect – testosterone from talking to girl, swept him off his feet. He called the Fish & Game service. The gig was 40 miles from the nearest paved road, 60 miles from the nearest person, 7 months in a big tent. Completely lost in fantasy, he signed up.

His parents (parents, sheesh!) asked stupid questions like, how he would stay warm, how he would get help if he got injured – things he probably should have asked before accepting the job and what about school.⁵ He finally persuades them. Then he tells his roommate who asks more questions: how will you get there? You have to buy your own food – who’s paying for it? What about your scholarship?⁶ Fromm rushes off, finds a humanity professor he’s never met before, and persuades him to let him do an independent study on journaling so he can stay enrolled. He buys beans and rice and potatoes, pots and pans, convinced he’ll live off the land by hunting (in winter) and his roommate takes him out to fire his rifle for the first time. Wool pants, log splitters, six Foxfire-ish books about how to survive in the wilderness. His friend takes him elk hunting. He shoots a squirrel and his friend shows him how to skin it. He roasts it over a fire and, after a few bites, accepts a peanut butter sandwich. That night, while his friend sleeps on the other side of the fire, Fromm regrets ever talking to that girl at the pool. But he can’t back out – the Fish & Gamewarden is coming to pick him up in two days and his friends have given him a dozen drunken going-away parties.

An ex-girlfriend gives him a “tiny, tiny puppy” supposedly a husky-shepherd mix, because he’d be “crazy not have a dog out there” with him – and he runs out to buy enough dog food for seven months, using up the last of the money he’d be making. And then he gets a call: his scholarship has been revoked. The independent study journaling class wasn’t enough to qualify him as “enrolled.”

Hungover, he helps the wardens load the truck, says goodbye to his friends, and climbs in to the truck. Before they’ve left the city limits, he’s asleep. When he wakes up two hours later, he has no idea where he is. They keep driving. He falls asleep again. They keep driving. And driving. In the middle of nowhere, the wardens start setting up his tent and realize that the doesn’t even know how to tie a knot properly. Nodding at his gun they point out that he doesn’t have a hunting license. They leave him with an old stick-shift truck (his experience driving stick is limited) and a handsaw (because he doesn’t know how to work a chain saw), and a hand-crank phone attached to a telephone wire which doesn’t seem to work (“maybe a tree fell down on the wire”). They advise him to focus on cutting the firewood he’ll need before the snow starts, about seven cords. “What’s a cord?” he asks. It seems important. They explain and realizing how ignorant he is, add, “Better cut ten, just to be safe.”

If you’re starting to think of Christopher McCandless at this point, I won’t blame you.

But he survives.

The rest of the book takes us through his time in the wilderness, the people he meets (it feels like the wardens are always checking up on him, and mountain lion hunters come in January and take him under their wing), his work keeping the streams from icing up and freezing the young salmon, the animals he sees (and kills), and how he keeps busy so he doesn’t go insane.

If you read too much and fantasize about living in the wilderness – and yet, have very little experience doing so – this is a good book to read. Unlike McCandless, who I suspect of mental illness, Fromm is in his right mind, just a dumb teenager, too dumb to realize how in over his head he truly is.

The thing that impressed me about this book, besides the beauty of his writing, is the number of people he runs into out there. The wardens drop by, mountain lion hunters, other wildlife biologists, a couple who had gotten lost trying to drive to Boise. In fact, at the end of the book, he feels overwhelmed by all the people who are camping near him once the snow melts, and negotiates an early end to his contract so he can get out, get away from a place that had seemed intimidatingly isolated at the start of the book now seems polluted by people.

This one is still in print and you won’t have trouble finding it. Give it a shot. Better than another fantasy “beach read.”

1. Swimming scholarship in Montana? Yep, it gets cut his junior year. ↩︎
2. A major he describes stumbling into. ↩︎
3. But not as a hunter. ↩︎
4. Which, the author informs us, is in Missoula, extensive. ↩︎
5. He told his mom it would be great experience for me as a wildlife biologist. “My mother didn’t think experience as a lunatic would help with anything.” ↩︎
6. The scholarship is $1500/year; the total pay for 7 months is $1400. Oops. ↩︎