The Hard Way Home: Alaska Stories of Adventure, Friendship, and the Hunt

A lifelong Alaskan, Steve Kahn moved at the age of nine from the “metropolis” of Anchorage to the foothills of the Chugach Mountains. A childhood of berry picking, fishing, and hunting led to a life as a big-game guide. When he wasn’t guiding in the spring and fall, he worked as a commercial fisherman and earned his pilot’s license, pursuits that took him to the far reaches of the Alaskan wilderness. He lived through some of the most important moments in the state’s history: the 1964 earthquake (the most powerful in U.S. history), the Farewell Burn wildfire, the last king crab season in Kodiak Island waters, the Exxon Valdez oil spill and cleanup, and even the far-reaching effects of the 9/11 attacks.

The essays in The Hard Way Home offer a view of Alaska that is at once introspective and adventurous. Here we find the state’s plants, animals, people, geography, politics, and culture considered from an intimate perspective, yielding hard-earned lessons about conservation, sustainability, and living well. An irrepressible guide, Kahn invites readers to share his experiences and discoveries and to consider questions about a place, and a life, that are disappearing.


Purchase the audio edition.
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The Hard Way Home: Alaska Stories of Adventure, Friendship, and the Hunt

A lifelong Alaskan, Steve Kahn moved at the age of nine from the “metropolis” of Anchorage to the foothills of the Chugach Mountains. A childhood of berry picking, fishing, and hunting led to a life as a big-game guide. When he wasn’t guiding in the spring and fall, he worked as a commercial fisherman and earned his pilot’s license, pursuits that took him to the far reaches of the Alaskan wilderness. He lived through some of the most important moments in the state’s history: the 1964 earthquake (the most powerful in U.S. history), the Farewell Burn wildfire, the last king crab season in Kodiak Island waters, the Exxon Valdez oil spill and cleanup, and even the far-reaching effects of the 9/11 attacks.

The essays in The Hard Way Home offer a view of Alaska that is at once introspective and adventurous. Here we find the state’s plants, animals, people, geography, politics, and culture considered from an intimate perspective, yielding hard-earned lessons about conservation, sustainability, and living well. An irrepressible guide, Kahn invites readers to share his experiences and discoveries and to consider questions about a place, and a life, that are disappearing.


Purchase the audio edition.
16.95 In Stock
The Hard Way Home: Alaska Stories of Adventure, Friendship, and the Hunt

The Hard Way Home: Alaska Stories of Adventure, Friendship, and the Hunt

by Steve Kahn
The Hard Way Home: Alaska Stories of Adventure, Friendship, and the Hunt

The Hard Way Home: Alaska Stories of Adventure, Friendship, and the Hunt

by Steve Kahn

Paperback(Reprint)

$16.95 
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Overview

A lifelong Alaskan, Steve Kahn moved at the age of nine from the “metropolis” of Anchorage to the foothills of the Chugach Mountains. A childhood of berry picking, fishing, and hunting led to a life as a big-game guide. When he wasn’t guiding in the spring and fall, he worked as a commercial fisherman and earned his pilot’s license, pursuits that took him to the far reaches of the Alaskan wilderness. He lived through some of the most important moments in the state’s history: the 1964 earthquake (the most powerful in U.S. history), the Farewell Burn wildfire, the last king crab season in Kodiak Island waters, the Exxon Valdez oil spill and cleanup, and even the far-reaching effects of the 9/11 attacks.

The essays in The Hard Way Home offer a view of Alaska that is at once introspective and adventurous. Here we find the state’s plants, animals, people, geography, politics, and culture considered from an intimate perspective, yielding hard-earned lessons about conservation, sustainability, and living well. An irrepressible guide, Kahn invites readers to share his experiences and discoveries and to consider questions about a place, and a life, that are disappearing.


Purchase the audio edition.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780803265196
Publisher: Nebraska
Publication date: 09/01/2014
Series: Outdoor Lives
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 224
Product dimensions: 5.10(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Steve Kahn is a lifelong Alaskan and former hunting guide who lives a subsistence-based lifestyle on Lake Clark near Port Alsworth, Alaska. He is a contributor to the anthologies Wild Moments: Adventures with Animals of the North and Crosscurrents North: Alaskans on the Environment.

Table of Contents


Map of Alaska
Introduction
Part One - Ranging Out
Chapter 1 - One Last Cast
Chapter 2 - Hats Off to Hal
Chapter 3 - Burn
Chapter 4 - Standing on a Heart
Chapter 5 - Crabbing
Chapter 6 - Field Test
Chapter 7 - Exxon Summer
 
Part Two - Guiding Days
Chapter 8 - Searching within the Archipelago
Chapter 9 - The Hard Way Home
Chapter 10 - Something in the Bones 
Chapter 11 - Porcupine Pass
Chapter 12 - Trespass
Chapter 13 - Ruse of Rocks
Chapter 14 - Almost Too Legal
Chapter 15 - Tracks on the Pingston
Chapter 16 - A Face in the Fog
Chapter 17 - Fines and Fine Lines
 
Part Three - Settled In
Chapter 18 - Getting There
Chapter 19 - Return
Chapter 20 - The Wake
Chapter 21 - September Shadows
Chapter 22 - Of Wood and Warmth
Chapter 23 - Salvage
 
Afterword
Acknowledgments
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