"In the fall of 1978 Ray Ordorica packed everything he thought he would need into his Toyota Land Cruiser and drove north to Alaska. He came to a land he had never seen, to find something he wasn't even sure existed: a wilderness cabin he could use for a year or more to live, think, relax, read, and write. Ordorica found his cabin, fixed it up, and, although it was just an uninsulated twelve-by-sixteen-foot one-room log structure, he spent three winters...