CloudDancer's Alaskan Chronicles, Volume III - The Tragedies

This is the second of a three volume series. Again you'll feel as if you're sitting right beside CloudDancer in the cockpit. Half your time is spent on the EDGE of your seat. The other half is spent laughing so hard you'll be glad you're wearing your seatbelt.

CloudDancer readers who bought the original book demanded more. Many refuse to even loan the book to a friend it is so cherished. And one pilot-Mom reports that her 12-year-old son used a story from the first book for a schoolbook report. It got an A-Plus! Some may question whether these tales are completely true. CloudDancer swears they are. But nobody denies that they are some of the funniest flying follies ever written.

In 1967, Christine and Mark leave New York State and drive out to British Columbia, looking for a remote place to disappear from civilization. Christine teaches in a one-room school in the Chilcotin, where ranchers and Indians still live the old-time way.

Then they venture up the coast of B.C. in March in an unseaworthy boat, only to get shipwrecked and go ten days without food or warmth. When their son is born, they return to the Chlcotin and stake land. They have a misadventure of getting lost in hostile country, and spend two nights sitting by a fire.

Mark finds the lakeshore too confining, so they travel by horseback and develop two homesteads in remote places. They hunt, fish, cut hay with scythe, store food up in a cache, build cabins, and spend three winters living in a tent pitched on logs.

Christine falls in love with Sage, and walks forty miles to the trapline where he is wintering. Over the next eight years, they homebirth two boys, trap, and build their homestead, including goats and gardens.

Once again she breaks up her relationship, and over the next ten years, gives birth to another son, raises her boys on her own, motivates them to be creative outdoor kids, and asks Jesus to be Lord of her life.

She meets and marries George, and the family moves to 100 Mile. George hits the bottle and goes berserk, so Christine moves back to her cabin in the Chilcotin.

Simon re-enters her life and she moves to Quesnel with him. That relationship falls apart, and she moves back to her cabin at Tatia Lake in 2004. The four boys are grown up, Christine is 59 years old and a grandmother of five, and finally has time to write this unusual autobiography.

John's career as a bear guide spans Alaskan bear hunting from the immediate post war period to the present time. He has guided black and brown bear hunters for all these years and polar bear hunters for 18 of the 20 years it was a popular sport.

Getting three trucks and two horses stuck in the mud on "a good road" into BC's wild, remote interior was just the start of Bruce Watt's Chilcotin adventures—and it was his honeymoon, too. The wildlife, landscape and quirky, down-to-earth people captivated Bruce, and despite the hard work and challenging conditions, the Watts put down roots, raising a family, alongside herds of cattle and horses.

A consummate storyteller, Bruce tells it like it was—and perhaps still is for many people calling this place home. These yarns capture the adventure and humour of running a ranch—from roping cougars to close calls on cliff edges and other "typical" accidents. His stories of chasing horses, navigating the backcountry and getting five kids off to school have a charm all their own.