Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by modern life: the pinging of phone notifications, the noise of city life, the omnipresence of bright artificial lights. I allow myself to dream of an alternative universe in which I live in harmony with nature, off the grid and far away.
But there is no way I could hack it. That’s what I concluded when reading the harrowing memoir of Charlotte Morritt-Jacobs, a video journalist who lives with her husband in a log cabin on a lake 40 minutes north of Yellowknife. Everything about their lives takes extreme effort. Their electricity comes from solar panels on the cabin’s roof (and, in the depths of winter, occasionally a backup Honda generator). They trap their own rabbits to eat and collect wild chamomile for tea.
For Maclean’s, she writes enthusiastically about the joys of her lifestyle, though she admits it can sometimes be treacherous. The couple recently had a baby—I won’t spoil the story, but let’s just say it involves a trip to the mainland in the spring while the ice was thawing using a canoe, a skidoo and an ice-measuring device.
—Sarah Fulford, editor-in-chief
