Hunted in Paradise

“John Holt’s writings make the stark beauty of wilderness lands seem as real as if you’re standing there on a high plateau with him. His characters are sunburnt, wind-blistered real. The harsh reality of living off the land offers a pleasure all its own. And death is always a integral part of Holt’s landscape.”
- Nick Teranzi, Online Critics Corner

Jack Graves lived off the land, hunting and fishing and making his own way in this harsh, dry country that lay well away from cities. Free. Lonesome. No rules. But then his solitude is interrupted. Dark Star helicopters hovering over Mad Woman Gulch. Fires. Dead men. What was happening to his beloved Montana wilderness? Coal mining, that was nature’s enemy. Meanwhile, Dark Star went about the business of punching the line through, hopefully before the winter weather, ugly storms screaming down from the arctic, closed in sometime in November. Piles of steel railroad ties, miles of heavy steel track, powerful graders, earth hauling rigs the size of houses, lots of explosives, track-laying machinery, D-11s, all of this stuff began accumulating in the company’s yard. Would his life ever be the same?

John Holt is the author of over two dozen published books including Plain Crazy in Paradise, Blown Away Under the Big Sky, The Lost Patrol, Yellowstone Drift – Floating the Past in Real Time, Arctic Aurora – Canada’s Yukon and Northwest Territories, Coyote Nowhere – In Search of America’s Last Frontier. His work has appeared in such publications as Men’s Journal, Fly Fisherman, High Country News, Crossroads, E – The Environmental Magazine, and Gray’s Sporting Journal. He and his wife, photographer Ginny, live in Livingston, Montana.