TRINA MOYLES is a writer, photographer, potter, and seasonal smoke spotter in the northern boreal. She is the author of Women Who Dig: Farming, Feminism, and the Fight to Feed the World. Her award-winning writing has been published in The Globe and Mail, The Walrus, Alberta Views, Maisonneuve, Hakai Magazine, and many other publications. She lives, writes, and adventures in northwestern Alberta with her canine sidekick, Holly.
WINNER OF THE ALBERTA LITERARY AWARD FOR MEMOIR
WINNER OF THE 2021 NATIONAL OUTDOOR BOOK AWARDS IN THE OUTDOOR
LITERATURE CATEGORY
FINALIST FOR THE ROBERT KROETSCH CITY OF EDMONTON BOOK PRIZE
“Moyles tells a totally engrossing story of fear and
love, self-recrimination and healing, by turns vivid with memory
and presence. Page after page, I felt immersed in the rejuvenating
wonders of the natural world, rendered here in all their
magnificent, everchanging detail. Reader, you will roar
through this book.” ―Charlotte Gill, author of Eating Dirt: Deep
Forests, Big Timber, and Life with the Tree-Planting Tribe
“Trina Moyles has written a beautiful, closely observed love letter
to the boreal forest and the wilderness of northern Canada at a
time when it is threatened by unprecedented change. But Lookout is
more than that: it's also a powerful, unforgettable story about the
ways that solitude in nature can break us down, and then put us
back together again.” ―Eva Holland, author of Nerve: A
Personal Journey Through the Science of Fear
“A vital and howling missive of a book. Lookout holds the wide
wisdom and fierce beauty of the boreal forest it
depicts. Trina Moyles has spent several seasons sitting in the
fire, looking into the heat of love, death and regenerated life;
experiencing solitude as intensifying tincture. She writes as a
wild and erudite witness, bursting with hunger and feral passion
for the living world.” —Kyo Maclear, author of Birds Art
Life: A Year of Observation
“Trina Moyles is a natural storyteller. As a novice fire lookout,
she retreats into the bush, her heart and self-trust broken, and
becomes the sort of woman who shoots a bear in the butt with a
rubber bullet then bakes a peach cobbler, all while a
record-breaking wildfire rages toward her. Lookout is courageous,
vulnerable, funny and enthralling. Above all else, it imparts
a much-needed message of hope and regeneration.” —Jan Redford,
author of End of the Rope: Mountains, Marriage, and Motherhood
“With effortless prose, Trina Moyles proves herself a deft observer
of both the fires in the distance, and the desires, dreams and
doubts she holds close. Moyles’ voluntary solitude will make her
readers somehow feel less alone. Lookout is a marvel.” —Marcello Di
Cintio, author of Pay No Heed to the Rockets: Life in Contemporary
Palestine
“In her engrossing—at times raw—memoir, Moyles elegantly unfurls an
unanticipated personal evolution. . . . [Lookout] can feel
novelistic in its combination of evocative descriptions of
jaw-dropping nature and Jack London-esque touches.” —The Globe and
Mail
“Crossing between countries and seasons, navigating years and
relationships, and venturing in and out of the vast Canadian boreal
forest along a network of fire towers, Trina Moyles’ Lookout weaves
together the story of one woman’s becoming. As she struggles to
overcome PTSD and heartbreak and return to herself in the remote
Alberta wilderness of her childhood, Moyles comes to realize that
the journey to the fire tower is less a groundless flight and more
a homecoming, both to the land and to herself. Far from a story of
vanishing into the bush in order to disappear, Lookout chronicles
Moyles’ emergent awareness of the profound links between those who
strive to keep the forests and the surrounding towns and cities
safe, and the vast ecosystems in which they work. It’s a wry,
generous, and grounded narrative that shows how it’s possible to
regenerate a sense of self after profound loss. Moyles, like her
beloved boreal forest, rebounds with resilient grace.” —Jenna
Butler, author of Revery: A Year of Bees and A Profession of Hope:
Farming on the Edge of the Grizzly Trail
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