Lost and Found in Alaska: Memoirs

It was a photograph in a Time magazine article about The University of Alaska that sparked the imagination of a young Joel Rudinger and led to a life-changing, four-year adventure in the newly-added 49th state. Lost and Found in Alaska is packed as full as a camp duffel bag on a forty-day hunting trek through the Alaskan Range, as challenging, yet satisfying, as a graduate instructor’s first day of class. The real-life characters in this tale could have sprung from the imagination of Jack Fairbanks Annie, Hal (who wept when he heard “Danny Boy”), the beautiful half–native Bobbi, who stole this young man’s heart, or the odd women who would lock a fellow in their basement. Even an appearance by a ghostly canine. And what North wilderness saga would be complete without hot apple pie and coffee, disorienting twenty-four-hour nights, minus eighty-degree winds, gigantic mosquitoes attacking hardy gandy dancers, and a disastrous earthquake? Like most of life’s difficult times, however, the author learns that even the most mundane acts, such as sorting mail or shoveling manure at a dairy farm can present a worthwhile lecture. If a college degree takes four years, Joel Rudinger’s four years in Alaska advanced his education exponentially in hard-knock lessons and moments of “What was that brilliant micro-second visible flicker of light? I was never religious, but I felt that this was a profound spiritual moment. I now and forever would be a part of this wild land.” —Christina Lovin, author of A Stirring in the Dark, and What We Burned for Warmth.