Wildfire in the Wilderness by Chris Czajkowski
19.95 plus 5 % gst = 20.95 CAD
Soft Cover, 224 pages
322 grams
22.8 x 15.6 x 1.7 cm
Harbour Publishing, August 2006
Wildfire in the Wilderness describes a terrifying threat to Chris Czajkowski’s off-road wilderness property. In 1988, Chris started laboriously building two cabins beside a high-altitude lake in British Columbia’s Coast Mountains. She worked single-handedly using no heavy machinery, and it took her three years. Ten years later she erected a third cabin (this time with help). They formed the basis of The Nuk Tessli Alpine Experience.
2004 was an extremely hot, dry summer, the third in a series. On 21st June, a lightning strike 40 km away created some smoke. But there was a deep valley full of lakes in between, so not too much concern. The fire was in the nearby Tweedsmuir Provincial Park, and no one did anything about it. For the next month it slowly crept nearer. Then, at the end of July, it took off. In two days it travelled four times the distance it had done in the past month. Chris’s nearest neighbour in that direction (30 km away) was burned out, and her first wilderness home at Lonesome Lake (Cabin at Singing River) was also destroyed. Everyone for a 100km radius was evacuated and soon Chris and her two guests at Nuk Tessli threw emergency essentials into a float plane and abandoned the cabins to their fate.
Illustrated with Chris’s drawings.
