Book Review: Three Against the Wilderness

50 and sometimes 65+ below nights, snow drifts breaching 15 feet as a commonality, charging bull moose, forest fires forcing the horses to cross the lake and mosquitoes, horrible, horrible mosquitoes. And for what? You could say for some beavers, but really it was the restoration of an overly trapped ecosystem that, without their maintenance crew, had been left drained, dried and barren of its original inhabitants.

Three Against the Wilderness is a novel written by Eric Collier, a well known conservationist of his time who lived up in the Chilcotin area of BC, Canada in the early 1900s. Eric wrote for Outdoor Life in the late 40s and was convinced to write the story of his experience as a trapper and conservationist at a time when conservation wasn’t even understood by the majority of those involved in it. Who would have thought or even now fully understands how much can be destroyed or returned to an ecosystem with just a pair of beavers?

I want to emphasize, this true story of a homesteading family isn’t a hammer-it-over-your-head environmental story (the family makes their living trapping for furs), but it does demonstrate conservation from a family who to fulfill the request of a grandmother, determined to restore the area to its original condition with or without the beavers who were its original custodians.
I’ve always loved to read or hear about pioneer stories. The idea of living off the land and carving out an existence has always been in the back of my head (even if I know it will never happen to me). The lives were always simple and full, if fraught with difficulty and danger. This story has it all and presents it in a sometimes comedic, sometimes nail-biting way as Three, father, mother and child work together as a unit with nature, in nature and for nature.

If you like to see how families could survive simply and effectively, work together as one and care for the environment that lived in, I’d recommend you this book. It’s a story for everyone that understands or wants to understand more about the pioneering life, cold nights and the results of hard work.

If you’d like to see the fruit of the beaver’s labors, just check out the following coordinates:  52°11’46.53″N, 122°31’24.24″W.  Or look at Google maps.