The Boundary Waters region of Minnesota and Ontario is a vast wilderness of quiet beauty, visited and loved by many, but home to only a rugged few. In 1928, Justine Kerfoot arrived, a Northwestern University graduate headed for medical school until her family lost both their Illinois homes in the stock market crash. Thrust into year-round life at her mother's fledgling summer resort, Justine was confronted with learning survival in the frigid north woods, a challenge she met with extraordinary verve and recounts with great candor and humor in this remarkable book. Kerfoot has paddled all the lakes and streams in this border country, and she knows them well. Her lyrical descriptions of wildlife and seasonal environments express the deep reverence for nature that has become her way of life. In a new afterword, she reflects on the impact of restricted wilderness status on the region - called the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness since 1978 - and on her own convictions about people living in the wild.

Woman Of The Boundary Waters: Canoeing, Guiding, Mushing, and Surviving (Minnesota)

Biographies & Memoirs

Kerfoot, Justine

Historical

Univ. of Minnesota Press

Gunflint: Reflections On The Trail

Octavo, PP.189, Illustrations By Nancy Hemsted Seaton, A Rich Collection Of Memories

Gunflint : Reflections on the Trail

Travel

United States

Duluth, MN, U.S.A.: Pfeifer-Hamilton Pub, 1991

“The best way to get to know Justine Kerfoot would be to explore a northern forest with her. The next best way to know ‘Just’ is on these pages. Here Justine is at her best, sharing with us her romantic and colorful, and sometimes a tad dangerous, life.” —Les Blacklock
Step off the Gunflint Trail, stride to a high point, and savor the view. Only the dark, cool waters and the rugged granite shores interrupt the panorama of the sweeping forest. In this engaging memoir, local pioneer Justine Kerfoot chronicled a year’s worth of experiences and insights while living on the legendary Gunflint Trail. The unique month-by-month chapters of Gunflint and Kerfoot’s rich memories provide a year-round view of a wilderness life that most of us glimpse only in all-too-short weekend interludes.
Justine Kerfoot (1906–2001) lived on Minnesota’s remote Gunflint Trail for more than six decades. She wrote of her adventures and travel in a weekly column for the Cook County News-Herald for forty-five years and is the author of Woman of the Boundary Waters (Minnesota, 1994).

Min Pfeifer-Hamilton Pub

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