Small Feet, Big Land: Adventure, Home, and Family on the Edge of Alaska

While I haven't read McKittrick's other works, after inhaling this book in a day, I will definitely be reading the others. Her writing style is simple and easy to read, yet filled with fantastic imagery and deep emotion. Like other reviewers have said, I endured the sections dealing with environmentalism and think her explanations and concerns about climate change would make an interesting book on their own, but for me it was her descriptions of life in Alaska, catching fish, gardening, berry picking and her adventures with her family that were the strongest and most interesting parts of this book. So many people feel that when you have kids, the adventure and fun stops, and the prove is changes, but doesn't stop and in some ways gets even better. McKiittrick also seems to have an almost magical ability to, within a sentance, encapsulate so much of what it means to be Alaska. "Subsistence is a mark of pride not poverty," "We're a club drawn together by our distance and our difference," and most importantly "Where misfits gather, it's easy to feel more normal." I think anyone who has spent time outdoors, and especially outdoors in Alaska with kids will like this book.

Although there are some interesting parts her overwhelming focus is "evil" carbon and her complete devotion to the carbon based climate change myth. Simply put although a large number of university academics who are funded to find a carbon link support the theory, the models do not accurately predict temperature variations. Satellite data shows no warming in the last 20 years. Of course the climate is continually changing and will change in the future but to blame change on a few parts per billion of carbon dioxide is crazy as the system is extremely complex. If she focused on the problems caused by coal pollution and damage to the environment caused by coal mines she would be more convincing as this is a real problem. The reality is "green energy" supplies approximately 7% of our energy and oil and gas will be around for for hundreds of years unless we start powering society will highly polluting wood like she does. And yes I do have a degree in mechanical engineering with focus on thermodynamics, heat transfer and fluid mechanics.

This well written account of adventure in Alaska with two babies is inspiring and challenges me to live life a little more richly.

I have really enjoyed delving into the life of Erin McKittrick and her family. An enjoyable read; as was her first book.

An adventure story for tree-huggers like me.

The book is not the grand adventure that it seemed to be. When it continued in the environmental issues, I quit reading the book.

Take a deep breath, close your eyes and picture this: husband and wife set off on a two-month-long expedition over an Alaska glacier during the storm-battered months of October and November. In addition to the usual tent, stove and camera, they also bring along their kids, an infant and a toddler, both still in diapers. They carry them over long stretches of frozen grey ice, hunker down in ferocious rain, and experience the magic of ice caves and desolate pebble-strewn beaches.Small Feet, Big Land chronicles life in Alaska for Erin, her husband Hig and their two children, Katmai and Lituya. It tells the story of ambitious expeditions (like the one described above), it describes the daily life of raising a family in a remote yurt, and it explores climate change through the lens of highly educated scientists making observations on the ground.At one point in her book Erin writes about a filmmaker who has joined part of an expedition: “It would be easy to show Greg’s camera a scene of cold and hardship to make viewers happy for their own cozy comforts. But I wanted to show them something that would make them sorry they weren't here.”This sentiment sums up well how I felt reading Small Feet, Big Land. At times, I snuggled deeply into the down comforter and quilted blankets on my own bed, grateful for a roof overhead, electric heat and a child sleeping peacefully in the room next door.But at other times, the book stirred my heart with vivid daydreams and deep reminisces of the six years I spent living in Alaska. I could almost feel the texture of tundra, taste the fresh berries and hear the roar of sea lions.Erin writes with beautiful descriptions, a rhythmical cadence and genuine candor. It’s a style that’s both easy to read and endearing.This candor comes out in paragraphs like this one:“As I thought about how our toddler got to watch sea lions and bears and wolverines and eagles, to throw rocks into glacial waterfalls, and to roam a scenic Alaska wilderness few adults have ever set foot in, it was easy to spin myself into a pleasant bubble of self-congratulation, the most awesome mother ever. On the other hand, he’d never realize a moulin was more special than a rock-lined puddle, or that a sea lion outranked a curious gull, or that he should appreciate the view of snowcapped peaks more than the face of an interesting climbing boulder.”Small Feet, Big Land is one of those books I wanted to absorb, word by word, reluctant to rush through it. By the end, I found myself debating with friends the issues of climate change described so vividly in this book and scheming up how we can take our daughter on a packraft trip through Alaska’s Brooks Range, the expedition of my dreams.It made my outdoor pursuits with my daughter feel less crazy and more normal, because as Erin so aptly puts it, when describing her son:“He had joined a family of adventurers, therefore he comes on adventures, adapting to the circumstances of his birth like every baby in the world.”