A review by trogdor19
Traplines: Coming Home to Sawtooth Valley by John Rember

5.0

I enjoyed this far more than I expected to. It gives you a feeling of what it is like to grow older, and how the same place looks different and affects you differently in each phase of your life. Rember talks about how the place (Sawtooth Valley) was for his parents, and the homesteaders that came before him. It is odd, though, because he seems to come to a conclusion about how life should be lived, and then do exactly the opposite. Consciously. Perhaps that is a misinterpretation, and perhaps Rember is just more cognizant that he is doing what we are all unconsciously doing. Either way, the Sawtooth Valley in this book is the raw heart of life: the place where you kill your own food and build your own cabin, and work with whatever skills you have to get by instead of to be successful.

He has a lot of important things to say in this book, and it is an interesting medium for observations about life: the universal through a specific lens of place and time.