Introduction
What We Carry
Axe
Chapter 1: North Fork: River
Rock Bar
Chapter 2: Sperry: Alpine
Chainsaw
Chapter 3: Middle Fork: Forest
Boat
Chapter 4: Cordova: Town
Skid Steer
Chapter 5: Denali: Park
Shovel
Chapter 6: Denali: Home
Afterword
Traildogs' Index
Acknowledgments
Works Consulted
Christine Byl lives on a few acres of tundra north of Denali National Park outside the town of Healy, Alaska, with her husband and an old sled dog. She received her MFA in fiction from the University of Alaska-Anchorage, and her stories and essays have appeared in magazines, journals, and anthologies. She owns and operates a small trail design and construction business.
"[It] blends beauty and crudeness, grit and grace... With
language that is lyrical despite the earthiness of its subject, Byl
turns the words of work into found poetry ("brake on, choke on,
pull, pull, fire"), offering a bridge for readers to those "who
would not speak like this themselves"-a beautiful memoir of muscle
and metal." -Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
"A beguiling journey of self-discovery." -Kirkus
Reviews"Here is a love story that encompasses wild country,
skillful labor, hand tools, crusty workmates, and lingo formal and
foul. As a woman, and a small one at that, the author must persuade
the males on her crews that she can more than hold her own at
hiking, trail-building, and swearing. She begins by convincing the
man who becomes her husband, and ends by convincing the reader.
You'll find plenty to relish here, in a narrative that's gritty,
witty, and wise." -Scott Russell Sanders, author of A
Conservationist Manifesto"Christine Byl has been summering on trail
crews for more than a decade and a half. A first-rate storyteller,
she details the techniques and tools, and the spirit of fellowship
and feel of the woods. If you love getting into the back country,
or even if you're an armchair backpacker as Iam now at age eighty,
you'll love Dirt Work." -William Kittredge, author of Hole in the
Sky and The Nature of Generosity"Every denizen of wild places from
Laotse to St. Francis to Rachel Carson to black bears to field mice
has depended upon trails. But rarely have we considered the people,
tools, or toil that lay our favorite trails down. Dirt Work is a
spectacular correction of this omission. Imbued with a
tough-minded, ribald reverence for honest labor that brings to mind
a female Gary Snyder or Wendell Berry (if you can imagine that!),
Christine Byl does epic justice to the whole-bodied satisfactions
that come of staying out in the weather, staying alert, and working
one's ass off for others with love, tenacity and skill." -David
James Duncan, author of The River Why and Sun House"Byl's is not a
world of groomed nature, inert tools, or nostalgic rituals, but a
vibrant landscape inhabited by people and animals and layered by
idea and history. She means this book as a love song, she writes,
and it is, not only from her to her fellow laborers, but from the
mind to the body, the hand to the tool, the human to the wild."
-Sherry Simpson, author of The Accidental Explorer: Wayfinding in
Alaska"While Byl does not romanticize nature or her work, she
skillfully uses poetic language, daring the reader to feel the
grit, grim, and sore muscles of working ten hour shifts digging,
chopping, clearing, and creating trails... Dirt Work is highly
recommended for readers who love the outdoors, and especially those
who have hiked in a national park or forest, and benefited from the
hard work of trail crews." -Women's Adventure Magazine"'Our work
speaks for us,' Byl writes, speaking on behalf of all traildogs,
who seldom brag about what they do. And it speaks volumes for this
woodswoman and wordsmith." -High Country News
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