Wilderness explorers and advocates Dave and Amy Freeman have published a book about spending twelve months in 2015 and 2016 living in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
During that time, they shared photos and blog posts online with followers and fans around the world, gaining them a large audience.
“A Year in the Wilderness: Bearing Witness in the Boundary Waters” documents in text and nearly 150 photos the married couple’s effort to experience everything canoe country has to offer, and to call attention to the threat of pollution from mines proposed nearby.
“It doesn’t take a year to fall in love with a place,” Amy and Dave write. “Sometimes all it takes is one sunset, a hike, a brief encounter with wildlife, a clear view of the Milky Way, or even a photograph. This year in the Wilderness heightened our respect for the Boundary Waters and strengthened our resolve to keep it as it is—untrammeled, unpolluted, and wild.”
Published by Minneapolis nonprofit publisher Milkweed Editions, the book deal was made when the organization’s leader paddled into the wilderness in the summer of 2016 to meet with the Freemans.
“With a camera and laptop wedged in the cockpit of their canoe, Amy and Dave went into the woods not to find solitude, but to bear witness to the land’s beauty and to broadcast its importance to the entire world,” the publisher says. “A Year in the Wilderness is their story: what they saw, and what they learned from living on the land for so long. It is a story about our incredible ability to connect, and how connection leads to conviction.”
The book was published on September 23, exactly one year after the pair paddled out of the wilderness on the fall equinox. Watch a video trailer below: