Cold Summers

"...This adventure came at a time in my life when I had no place left to go. The large part of a surveyor's work is to locate himself on the earth, and maybe that's why I took the job."

For more than a dozen seasons, author Steve Tyler toiled as a land surveyor in the Alaskan wilderness, from rain-drenched Ketchikan to Kodiak Island, from the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea to Anaktuvuk Pass, gateway to the Arctic. Bear attack survival was standard training and in the remotest sites the crews entrusted their lives to bush pilots, some saner than others. Surrounded by men half his age, a misfit among misfits, Tyler carved out a space to reflect on all his life's misadventures, recording moments of hilarity and horror, devastating sadness and jaw-dropping beauty.