On a slope above a mountain lake in Alaska’s Brooks Range, Sam and Billie Wright built a twelve-by-twelve-foot log cabin with hand tools and named it Koviashuvik—an Eskimo word meaning "living in the present moment with quiet joy and happiness." Sam’s account of the twenty years they spent there is both a tale of wilderness survival and an inspiring meditation on the natural world and humanity’s relationship to it.

Sam Wright now lives in Young, Arizona.

"His powerful memoir . . . begins with him confronting a bear that’s trying to break into his house at four in the morning and goes on to cover natural Arctic events . . . Wright smoothly combines science and philosophy in this graceful work, attuned to the physical and spiritual mysteries of nature."—Kirkus Reviews

"The Eskimo concept of koviashuvik resonates at the core of Wright’s thinking and of this book . . . The Eskimos, like the Wrights, understood that to experience koviashuvik one must live in harmony with nature, not separately and apart from it."—Bloomsbury Review

"This is the best book about Alaska written this decade, possibly this half-century."—Booklist