Wild Fierce Life
Dangerous Moments on the Outer Coast
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Description
Unflinching and heart-stopping stories that evoke a respect for nature both in its fragility and its power. Wild Fierce Life is a heart-stopping collection of true stories from the Pacific Coast that build a vivid portrait of life on the continental edge and one woman's evolving place within it. Author Joanna Streetly arrived on the west coast of Vancouver Island when she was nineteen, and soon adapted to the challenges of working on boats of all sorts, guiding multi-day wilderness kayak trips along the BC coast, and living in remote situations often without electricity or running water. From a near-death experience while swimming at night to an enigmatic encounter with a cougar, these stories capture the joys and dangers of living in a wild environment. Streetly's vivid storytelling evokes a sincere respect for nature, both its fragility and its power. Full of unflinching self-examination and a fidelity to the landscape of Vancouver Island's outer coast, these stories reveal the interplay between inner and outer landscapes - the evolution of a woman uncovering the pleasures and dangers of the wild life.
Reviews
"Joanna is a one-of-a-kind writer and human whose stories in this collection take us deep into her amazing and inspiring life in the wilderness. Her lyrical style is at once deeply moving and transformative because she is able to peel back the layers of her experience with such candor, insight, self-reflection and honesty. It's a powerful combination, one rife with poetry, that leaves her readers in awe and makes her one of my favourite Canadian writers."
--Cori Howard, corihoward.com
“With its gorgeous prose and adept storytelling, Wild Fierce Life captures life on the outer coast in a way that few recent titles have managed — and celebrates how this life can test the limits of who we are and how we understand the world around us. A must-read for all the adventurers among us, armchair and otherwise.”
—Tara Henley, The Vancouver Sun
“Wild Fierce Life is a portal into something sadly now rare: a human life lived in intimate relationship with the ocean and the wilderness. Joanna Streetly’s prose, by turns fluent and taut, is always captivating. Reading these essays, I too lived on the edge of the world. I tasted salt and felt the rain on my skin, and shared in the making of a life or death choice. When I reached the last page, I wanted to begin again.”
—Kathy Page, author of Paradise & Elsewhere and Alphabet
“… Those looking for an alternative to chauvinistic survivalist narratives of humans enduring in a hostile natural world will find respite in Streetly’s words. Those who have lived in a “wild” place will find some of Streetly’s experiences familiar, while those who have not will be impressed by her unique ability to render wilderness beloved without overly romanticizing it.”
—Lauren Harding, The Ormsby Review