Campsite Memories: True Tales from Wild Places

Fans of the outdoors may enjoy these engaging, if often slight, tales of adventure, friendship and nature. Jacobson, a professional canoe guide in Minnesota and Canada, comes off as a thoughtful, decent chap, and he's collected some good anecdotes along the way. He tells of a nonchalant young Inuit man who repairs a snowmobile in the middle of a blizzard using a piece of his rifle barrel. He meets some obnoxious kids who say they are from a ``church group'' but turn out to be escapees from a camp for juvenile delinquents. He recalls a masterful mechanic who moved between a blue-collar workplace and the white-collar world of his canoeing buddies. If Jacobson expresses reverence for nature, he's not unaware of irony; he reports that most Canadian Indians and Eskimos in the far north rely on power boats and Skidoos and have never even owned a canoe. Some of the better tales reveal something about the author, such as meeting his second wife when she joined his canoe trip and their wedding in the bush; he tells of getting lost as a young forester and of teaching ninth graders environmental science and seeing them develop concern for nature. Illustrations not seen by PW. (Feb.)