Babe in the Woods

At age eighteen, in 1974, Yvonne sets out to build a home from trees on eighty acres she’s bought on an Oregon mountainside. Log by log she creates a cabin and heals from an orphaned past, finding a new family in the forest and with people in a valley named John Day. This true story of one woman’s survival in the wilderness puts an honest and gritty face on the fantasy of living alone in the forest. Readers of My Side of the Mountain and Wild—and fans of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and Walden alike—will eagerly follow along on the journey through this candid, revealing account. Babe in the Woods includes original artwork and ledgers, further authenticating the construction of this three-story log cabin built by hand from trees on land Yvonne still owns today. It is the first in a three-book series about her relationship with woodsy things in a place of risk and isolation but also peace, quiet beauty, and repose.