Ecologist Anne LaBastille created the life that many people dream about. When she and her husband divorced, she needed a place to live. Through luck and perseverance, she found the ideal spot: a 20-acre parcel of land in the Adirondack mountains, where she built the cozy, primitive log cabin that became her permanent home. Miles from the nearest town, LaBastille had to depend on her wits, ingenuity, and the help of generous neighbors for her survival. In precise, poetic language, she chronicles her adventures on Black Bear Lake, capturing the power of the landscape, the rhythms of the changing seasons, and the beauty of nature’s many creatures. Most of all, she captures the struggle to balance her need for companionship and love with her desire for independence and solitude. Woodswoman is not simply a book about living in the wilderness, it is a book about living that contains a lesson for us all.

In 1976, Anne LaBastille, a young ecologist built her own log cabin at the edge of wilderness in the Adirondack Mountains of New York. She has lived there without electricity or a road for 30 years. Her first book, WOODSWOMAN, related encounters with wildlife, weather, & local folk over ten years. The sequel, BEYOND BLACK BEAR LAKE, described her building a new retreat for writing, "Thoreau II," closer to the wilderness. WOODSWOMAN III tells how Anne & her German shepherds encounter a perilous tornado, the joys of guiding, the sad passing of her noble dog, Condor, new environmental controversies & terrorism, the haunting beauty of the Adirondack Mountains, & the challenge of becoming an older woodswoman. She offers a strong inspirational message to women over 50 to become "fierce eco-feminists" & save our planet. In this third decade, Anne's writing is delightfully spunky & sensitive. WOODSWOMAN III is dynamite! Available May 1997 from West of the Wind Publications, Inc., R.D. 2, Westport, NY 12993. Phone & FAX: 518-962-8295. ISBN 0-9632846-1-4. $15.00. 256pp. (Orig.), Trade Paper.

"If you’re looking for a real declaration of independence, and a deeper social experiment, try a woman living alone in the Adirondacks for decades." —Megan Mayhew Bergman, Guardian Anne LaBastille found peace and solitude in the log cabin she built for herself at Black Bear Lake. But as the years passed, the outside world intruded in various ways: curious fans, after reading her best-selling book Woodswoman, tracked her down; land developers arrived; there was air and noise pollution and the damages of acid rain. Woodswoman II is the story of the author's decision to retreat farther, a half-mile behind her main cabin, and build a tiny cabin—fashioned after the one in Thoreau's Walden—in which she could write and contemplate. In this book (originally published under the title Beyond Black Bear Lake) she writes movingly of her life with two German shepherds as companions, of a sustaining relationship with a man as independent as herself, and her renewed bond with nature.

Wildlife ecologist Anne LaBastille is a pioneer in the growing movement of women into wilderness-oriented careers. In this groundbreaking book, she documents this phenomenon, profiling fifteen remarkable women ranging in age from twenty-one to seventy whose lives and professions center on the outdoors. Some are field scientists or hold technical jobs--a zoologist, a speleologist (cave explorer), a builder of log houses--others have forged unique, self-reliant lifestyles in wilderness homesteads. These women, LaBastille herself among them, constitute a new and important category of role models for young women. LaBastille also looks at the complex web of social and psychosexual factors that have alienated women from wilderness in the past and shows how feminism and the rise of environmental consciousness have allowed the "wilderness within women" to emerge. Updated with a new Afterword for this edition, Women and Wilderness offers exciting career ideas and inspiration for women everywhere.

After her bestselling book, Woodswoman, Anne LaBastille retreated even farther into the wilderness and built a tiny cabin fashioned after Thoreau's Walden. Her renewed bond with nature makes for another "eloquent, witty, and inspirational volume".--Booklist.

Working in an American primitive style animated by the humor and storytelling genius for which he is renowned, Caldecott Winner artist Paul O. Zelinsky puts oils to cherry and maple for this tall-tale competition between a Tennessee woods-woman extraordinaire and a hungry, fearsome bear.Thundering Tarnation has a bottomless appetite for settler's grub. When word goes out about a competition to hunt this four-legged forest of stubble, a young woman, second to none in buckskin bravery, signs up. "How about baking a pie, Angel?" the other hunters taunt. "I aim to," says Swamp Angel. "A bear pie."What follows is as witty a round of roughhousing as ever jostled the ranks of Americana. Anne Isaacs' original text unfolds in a crackling combination of irony, exaggeration, and bold image-making. Zelinsky's paintings respond with deft yet hilarious expressions, rhythmic shapes, and a sense of monumental motion, as benefits a heroine who can wield a tornado like a lasso, drink a lake dry, and snore down a forest. In the course of these grand shenanigans, the Great Smoky Mountains are stirred up, Montana's short-grass prairie laid down, and Thundering Tarnation's fate proves to have no less a reach than the starry heavens.Swamp Angel marks the debut of a promising new storyteller and adds to the tall-tale traditions a pictorial counterpart that will entertain and endure for a long time to come.

Jaguar Totem is the riveting account of Anne LaBastille's "other life" & the exciting counterpoint to the WOODSWOMAN Trilogy. From her log cabin at the edge of wilderness, Anne LaBastille fares out on fast-paced ecological consultancies which include teeming wildlife, dazzling land - & seascapes, world renowned scientists, glamorous conferences & daring field trips. Climb with Anne into magnificent cloud forests on Volcano Atitlan in Guatemala to establish a Quetzal Reserve. Camp on the beautiful beaches of remote Anegada Island in the Caribbean as she mist-nets birds & bats new to the area. Run rapids by dugout canoe in the Darien jungle of Panama where Anne meets a wondrous young female jaguar, "Mancha," while on a National Geographic assignment. Zodiak over the stormy North Atlantic to photograph huge gannet colonies off St. Kilda, Scotland. Jaguar Totem rivals anything in the WOODSWOMAN Trilogy. It tells of life intensely lived -- of life as vibrant as this book's cover. It reinforces Dr. LaBastille's strong belief that wildlands & wildlife everywhere need constant, compassionate care. Available from West of the Wind Publications, Inc., R.D. 2, Westport, NY 12993. Phone & FAX: 518-962-8295.