As a park warden in the national parks of Canada's Rocky Mountains, Sid Marty came to know that beautiful and treacherous landscape as few men or women do. He was a mountain climber, rescue team member, firefighter, wildlife custodian, and adviser to tourists, adventurers, and people passing through. At all times, he was an acute observer of human and animal behaviour. In these pages he records with wry wit and bitter insight true stories of heroism and folly drawn from life in the high country.

Marty writes vividly about a land and a way of life that are increasingly endangered. The visceral energy of his prose compels attention. This is a compulsive, alarming, and often hilarious read.

Sid Marty is a poet, author and musician based near the communities of Pincher Creek and the Crowsnest Pass. He is the author of five books of poetry and five nonfiction works. Though best known as a nonfiction author, he began his career as a poet. His first book, Headwaters (1973 ) was published to widespread national acclaim. Over the years, he has continued to publish poems in books, school texts, anthologies and magazines. The culmination of all that dedication to the “crafte so longe to lerne” is this collection of poems both published and new.

These are poems, often strongly resonant of western speech, that celebrate all the vicissitudes of rural life, the loves and losses, the valleys and peaks of life on the prairies, foothills and in the mountains of Alberta and British Columbia.

Sid Marty's profile page

“This is a tour-de-force…with something vital to tell the myopic city dweller about what is happening to him in the Age of the Machine.”
–Farley Mowat

“Marty is a magnificent storyteller. Like a bush-camp cook, he throws everything into the pot - high adventure-comedy, tragedy, even the lyric adjective…[His writing is] full-bodied and strong, warm and sensitive, angry and alive.”
–Edmonton Journal