Gary Ferguson’s latest book is a love story, and a bittersweet and poignant one at that. He regales us with his long, loving marriage to a woman who came to share his kindred spirit for the wilderness, bares his soul through the painful loss of her on a wilderness river in Canada, and takes us on a healing journey back into the wilderness.

Ferguson’s wife, Jane, through her death, sent him into the wilds they had both explored and loved together, with a request that he spread her ashes in five spots dear to them both; the Carry Home.

Ferguson revisits their past lives and shares life lessons learned in the wilds of the Rocky Mountains, the sandstone outback of southern Utah, and even the deep woods that can be found in western Connecticut.

Wandering these beautiful landscapes is not without risks, as an incident on Ontario’s Kopka River demonstrates. But there is also introspection, self-awareness, and a measure of self-sufficiency.

The author crafts these lessons from his wife’s experience of finding inner strength in Utah’s canyon country, through a program for troubled youth that took them into the wilderness, and from his own experiences.

“My redemption would come in the form of a last request Jane had made years before, asking me if she died, to scatter her ashes in her five favorite wilderness areas. And so I did. Five treks to five unshackled landscapes. At first, the journeys broke my heart. Later they helped me piece it together again. In the end these trips would bring me back to nature again, to wilderness. To the lilting beauty of unkempt places—places powerful enough to woo the hearts not only of the young but of anyone willing to put down the search for meaning for a little while and just float in the sensations of being alive.”