Somewhere, deep in the wild heart of the Adirondack Mountains, Anne LaBastille is writing a story. It is a story of the six million acres of untrammeled wilderness that surround her; a story of solitude and hair-raising hardship; a story of personal sacrifice and achieving a dream. It is the story of her life.

It's taken her a long time to write it. Almost thirty years, in fact, and she's not stopping now.
It all began in 1954, when she and her husband, with whom she'd managed a busy Adirondack resort, decided to separate. Anne LaBastille needed a place to live. Instead of doing what most people would do and rent an apartment or house, she decided to pursue her lifelong dream of living alone in the wilderness. There was no better place to start looking than right around her, in the Adirondack Park, which covers more area than any other national or state park in the United States. Anne LaBastille, who was born in New York City, fell in love with the Adirondacks during a three-day hiking trip when she was eighteen. Even though about half the park is state land, preserved as "forever wild" since 1894, LaBastille was able to find twenty acres of private land for sale, accessible only by boat or foot. It was here that Anne LaBastille and two local carpenters built her first log cabin. The entire process, from hauling the timber across the lake to installing doors and windows, was a trial of her wit and perseverance. Once the cabin was complete, her new lifestyle, devoid of electricity, indoor plumbing, and human companionship, presented her with a different set of trials: what would she do in an emergency situation? How would she keep her food fresh, and her cabin warm? How could she learn to live harmoniously with the active wildlife around her? Would she get lonely?

Anne LaBastille managed not only to acclimate to her rigorous new lifestyle, but to write a best-selling memoir about her experience, Woodswoman. And that's not all she's been doing; throughout her time in the Adirondack Park, Ms. LaBastille has written articles for National Geographic and Reader's Digest, served as a Commissioner of the Adirondack Park Agency and a licensed Adirondack guide, taught at Cornell University, and worked as a scientific advisor to numerous conservation organizations. She has written over a dozen books, including children's books and trade manuals. While her heart may reside in the Adirondack Mountains, Anne LaBastille's work as an ecologist and conservationist has taken her from Alaska to the Caribbean; she has also spent several years in Guatemala, researching and documenting the extinction of a rare bird called the grebe.

While Anne LaBastille's life in Adirondack Park, upon what her first memoir terms "Eagle Lake," was initially a dream come true, she eventually came to feel that her private "wilderness sanctuary" was being encroached upon by tourists, who flock to the area during the summer months for its superlative boating and hiking. So she did the impossible, again: she built another log cabin, this time on what she calls "Lilypad Lake." The story of her second plunge into the wilderness is chronicled in her second memoir, Woodswoman II, which many reviewers have dubbed the female response to Thoreau's Walden, the famous account of his time on Walden Pond.

She's still out there today. Anne LaBastille, now in her seventies, lives with her two German Shepherds, Condor and Chekika, in a log cabin she built by hand in the Adirondacks. She still chops her own firewood to heat her cabin. When she needs to contact civilization, she paddles across Lilypad Lake in the summer and crosses it on snowmobile in the winter. When the occasion arises, she still guides lost Adirondack tourists to safety. She's just completed a new memoir, Woodswoman IV, which she is self-publishing sometime this spring, and which she calls "powerful and emotional." Anne LaBastille, who recently appeared at the Plattsburgh Borders for a book-signing, is insistent upon two things: that we must dedicate ourselves to conservation and that everyone should follow their dreams. She, of course, will continue to do the same.