title: Letters from the Woods: Looking at Life through the Window of Wilderness
author: Michael C. Hurley
description: &quot;Whimsical . . . Elegiac. . .Hurley, like Hemingway, glories in the job cleanly done, and the days stretch out like an endless summer.&quot; Wilmington Star-News<br /><br />Hurley tells us the secret of life. You'll be happy to possess it, too... -- <i>Colorado Daily, Literature & Arts, November 23, 2004</i><br /><br />Like a visit to the campfire with an intelligent friend, this book will waft you into the woods an streams. -- <i>Paddler Magazine, May/June 2005</i><br /><br />Like all good nature writing, Hurley's reaches for more than simple narration and description of moments with nature. -- <i>Midwest Book Review, February 2005</i><br /><br />One of the best outdoor writings released this year. -- <i>Carroll Outdoors, Carroll County Times, December 2004</i><br /><br />Pointed, personal, and poignant. A deep and passionate tale of wilderness adventures. A celebration of universal truths. Well worth reading. -- <i>Raleigh News & Observer, May 26, 2005</i><br /><br />Selected as a finalist in the Nature category for the 2005 ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year award. -- <i>Finalist, 2005 Book of the Year (Nature)</i><br /><br />This book could prompt others to step back and rethink ways to bring more balance into their lives. -- <i>Foreword Magazine, May/June 2005</i><br /><br />[T]he essays offer tranquil and touching insight into life, love, faith and family from the vantage point of wilderness peace. -- <i>Adirondack Life Magazine, December 2005</i><br /><br />[T]urns up a little gem of an insight that gives meaning to the simple pleasures of life in the woods. -- <i>Outdoor Book Reviews, Spring 2006</i>
zlib_text: 
  
  
  ### Chapter XXI
  
  
  
  
  
  Thanks to Mr. Flushing’s discipline, the right stages of the river were
  reached at the right hours, and when next morning after breakfast the chairs
  were again drawn out in a semicircle in the bow, the launch was within a few
  miles of the native camp which was the limit of the journey. Mr. Flushing, as
  he sat down, advised them to keep their eyes fixed on the left bank, where
  they would soon pass a clearing, and in that clearing, was a hut where
  Mackenzie, the famous explorer, had died of fever some ten years ago, almost
  within reach of civilisation—Mackenzie, he repeated, the man who went farther
  inland than any one’s been yet. Their eyes turned that way obediently. The
  eyes of Rachel saw nothing. Yellow and green shapes did, it is true, pass
  before them, but she only knew that one was large and another small; she did
  not know that they were trees. These directions to look here and there
  irritated her, as interruptions irritate a person absorbed in thought,
  alt