The Story
When Ron Hyde was just a teenager, he decided to move to remote western Alaska. At first, it was about being with his dad. But his lifelong fascination with survival was the real calling, and life in the Bush would test him, emotionally and physically. As an outsider living among the Yup'ik people, he was welcomed into the Native culture, where he was guided by the wisdom of the elders.
Through life and death and the good-natured laughter of the ghosts who never really left him, this is Hyde's astonishing account of a remote life lived truly off the land, where thin ice, bears, and armed strangers posed daily threats. Later, Hyde would bring the lessons Alaska taught him to the corporate world, as well as to readers, in this riveting firsthand account of survival and the value of elders in a modern world that's all but forgotten them.
The ghosts of the people I lost are not defined by how they died. They are defined by how they lived. By what they knew and what they shared and what they built and what they gave. That is what I carry. That is the elders’ tale I am trying to pass on.
Author’s Bio
Ron Hyde writes under his Yupʼik name, Agyaq — "star" — given to him by the community of Goodnews Bay, a village on the Bering Sea coast where he lived, worked as a wilderness and fly-fishing guide, and served as a Village Public Safety Officer.
