At Home in the Woods

Bradford Angier and his wife Vena decide to follow in the footstep of their hero Henry David Thoreau, and forsake their city lives for the rustic simplicity of life in the woods of British Columbia.



One hundred years ago, Henry Thoreau wrote of the charms and joys of simple living in the woods, away from the hectic nuisances of our city civilization. His philosophy has become part of our American heritage, as sound today as the day he first set it down. But his advice on the simple life has seemed too rugged for later generations, brought up in cities, pampered with conveniences and scared of nature. Vena and Brad Angier were fed up with their city bound existence and longtime readers and admirers of Thoreau, they set out to see if his discoveries were valid today. This is the account of two wilderness-loving tenderfeet, who headed for the tall timber on the banks of the Peace River, British Columbia. There near the trading post of Hudson Hope they found their Walden. How they made themselves ‘At Home in the Woods,’ stocked their cabin, met their interesting wilderness neighbors who helped them get settled and who saw them through their first winter makes honest and exciting reading. The city-bred Angiers found out that Thoreau was right when he wrote: “What people say you can not do, you try and find you can.”