I am on my mountain in a tree home that people have passed without ever knowing I am here. The house is a hemlock tree six feet in diameter, and must be as old as the mountain itself.  . . . The lamp I am writing by is deer-fat poured into a turtle shell with a strip of my old city trousers for a wick.

Snug in the security of the home he has made for himself, itemizing in his mind the winter stores he has on hand, Sam Gribley realizes for the first time that his experiment will be successful. There is a wild sense of elation in the certainty that he has mastered the technique of survival. Now he can look back on the first frustrating weeks of his adventure and recall his own ineptness and inexperience and the joy of every minor success. He can view his struggles with gentle wit and mature detachment—at least he thinks he can, until, in the recounting, his true emotions again sweep over him. Then Sam's story really takes wings!

This is a unique and exciting first-person account of a modern boy's adventurous experiment in complete self-sufficiency. Quoting excerpts from his own diary, Sam Gribley recounts in detail his experiences, his emotions and reactions, his minute observations of the weather and the plant and animal life during the changing seasons of a year he spends all by himself, "living off the land," in a remote area of the Catskill Mountains.

Written with a vivid perception and a wry, gentle humor by a talented and popular author, this is a book in a class by itself, giving not only an intimate picture of an individual's adaptation to the demands exerted by nature, but the growth, emotional adjustment and maturing of a boy, who within a few years "will be needing to shave."

From the dust jacket