To Touch a Dream: A Wilderness Adventure
To Touch a Dream
A Wilderness Adventure
by Sunny Wright
$21.95
- Spring 2006
- ISBN 978-1-55380-035-4 (1-55380-035-4)
- 6″ x 9″ Trade Paperback, 190 pages
- Memoir of Wilderness Living
This warm-hearted memoir tells the story of the dream of many North Americans: to throw up a dull job and journey into the wilderness to live off the land. Sunny Wright does exactly that when she decides at age twenty-eight to quit working at a “man-sized job for a female wage” in a Vancouver sawmill. With her young daughter Lisa and friend Betty, they sell off everything from their urban existence and outfit themselves with two trucks full of goods for the journey in to northern B.C in search of a place to live.
They have never even gone camping before, but they are determined to succeed, and they do. After much searching they find land near Vanderhoof and begin the hard but joy-filled labour of constructing their own house, their own barn and setting up as subsistence farmers. Eventually they will learn how to run a bootleg still for extra money and will become famous in the area for the dogs they raise and the winter trips they take by dogsled.
This is a book that readers can enjoy as they live alongside Sunny, Betty and Lisa in the bush, watching them learn to build log houses, make friends with the fiercely individualistic people of the back country, survive the desperately cold winters and enjoy the independence of rural life. The volume includes many black-and-white photos of their life in the bush.
Click here to read an excerpt from To Touch a Dream.
Reviews:
“In 1968 when Sunny Wright stepped off the treadmill, off the grid, and into the bush she had never even been camping. She had only her enthusiasm to serve as a compass. A born braveheart, Sunny learned to hunt and trap, and to tackle each new challenge that life delivered to her wilderness door. To Touch a Dream is a thoroughly engaging account of her experiences.”
—Deanna Kawatski, author of Wilderness Mother and Clara and Me“An engaging and absorbing slice-of-life, set in Fort Saint James.”
—Anne Burke, The Prairie Journal Trust“This latter day history presents wonderful adventures, experiments, and learning experiences. . . . a delight to read.”
—British Columbia History
