Snowshoes and Spotted Dick: Letters from a Wilderness Dweller

Chris Czajkowski chose to build her life and small ecotourism business on the shore of a high-altitude lake near the southern tip of Tweedsmuir Provincial Park. It is a formidable landscape of lake-dotted alpine plateaus abutting the glacier-swathed backbone of the central Coast Range.

Snowshoes and Spotted Dick describes Czajkowski’s experiences as she builds her fourth cabin in the wilderness with hand tools, two chainsaws, an Alaskan Mill and some helpful friends. One of her helpers is Nick Berwain, a quiet but literary young German who corresponds with Czajkowski long after his return home.

In these fascinating letters to Berwain, Czajkowski details her often solitary life: how she breaks trails by snowshoe with her two pack dogs, encounters grizzly bears, builds a custom stone oven and learns how to use it to bake bread -and spotted dick, a traditional English steamed pudding. The letters also chronicle Czajkowski’s challenges and triumphs as she tries to finish her cabin. Food and building supplies must be flown in and Czajkowski must hike more than 30 kilometres to the nearest road to lead guiding trips and to attend craft fairs and book promotions to supplement her income.

Lyrically written, Snowshoes and Spotted Dick provides a close look at a simpler way of life that most of us only dream about, one that cleaves to nature with beauty, resilience and independence.