• by Calvin Rutstrum
• four volumes (illustrated)
• 5.5" x 8"
• softcover

"As I type these pages, a Franklin fireplace stove, burning jackpine and birch, warms my back enough to allow a wide-open door at a temperature well under sixty degrees." - from chapter one of Once Upon a Wilderness.

Rutstrum (1895-1982) is a perennial favorite around Best Made because he had the rare skill and foresight of being able to combine the practical advice of wilderness living with deft insights and poetic verse that constantly inspire us to get outside. His first book The New Way of the Wilderness was originally written for the camp where he worked for ten years and soon after it was published and soon became an indispensable gem for canoeists and campers. In the tradition of Muir, Thoreau, and Robert Service, Rutstrum is one of the great American wilderness visionaries, and for the first time Best Made is honored to offer up four of his best volumes: The New Way of the Wilderness, Once Upon a Wilderness, The Wilderness Life, and Paradise Below Zero. 

Read our review of Paradise Below Zero