Anne LaBastille spent most of her adult life in a forest cabin, far away from human settlements. By fulfilling her teenage dream, she has proved that it is possible to coexist with wildlife without trying to tame it at all costs. 

I look at the photographs: in the foreground there is a woman and a dog. The woman is standing by the jetty in the water, washing her fair hair, suds running down her face, her eyes closed. The dog stands over her, its shaggy body taking up almost half the frame. The caption to the photo reads, “Pitzi licks the shampoo from my head, savoring the suds.” A dark patch of the forest fills the background. In another photograph, the same fair-haired woman is chopping wood, axe in hand, a mountain of logs grows around the stump. A cabin can be seen in the background. More black and white photographs show the same person: carrying a large rucksack as she walks uphill, hugging a white tree trunk, bathing in a stream, cooking over an open fire, driving a snowmobile, sailing a canoe on a rough lake. 

Widening the Canon 

It is nice to look at these photographs as I sit in a warm room, wrapped in a blanket, a mug of hot tea in hand and think to myself: I would love to live like that, too—in the forest, away from people and their intrusive presence, no alarm clocks in the morning, no complaints of superiors at noon, no arguments from a dissatisfied family in the evening. An escape from civilization and a return to nature is a recurring motif in art and literature. Many people dream of it, but few actually do it. The latter are typically men, often white and representing Western culture, such as Henry David Thoreau, author of the celebrated book Walden or Life in the Woods. More recently, Christopher McCandless’ solitary, months-long, tragi