Pete Fromm

After I graduated from college, I went on a week long white water rafting trip. It was absolutely amazing and had I not already had a life plan in place, I might just have tried to become a river rat. The trip was exhilarating and gorgeous and I could see the appeal of the life of river runners, even if it was hard to be that grubby all the time. As we approached each set of rapids, the guide in the raft told us about the make-up of that particular rapid and how we planned to run it. But show more there was always a caveat to the plan. Rapids are not static. They change over the seasons. They change depending on the volume of water raging through them. And they can even change beyond recognition after just a single storm. In many ways, and in this in particular, rapids reflect our lives. We never know when a rapid is going to spin us around or present differently than we expect or just be wild with water running high. Pete Fromm has captured life as a series of rapids to run beautifully in his novel, If Not For This.

Maddy and Dalt meet at a party for boatmen on the Snake River. Their connection is instant and they embark on an enviable all-consuming love story, dubbing themselves "the lucky ones." But life rarely goes as planned and after they start up their own river running company, Maddy discovers that the bone deep weariness she's been experiencing is not mono as she'd perhaps thought, but instead MS and that she's pregnant as well. And so Maddy and Dalt have to change course and fight for some sense of normalcy as they plunge into the out of control rush of rapids they didn't hear coming.

As they grapple with the inexorable march of Maddy's illness, they must change how they thought they'd live their lives together. They are clearly soul mates and while their connection can sometimes be a bit much, it gives a solid foundation to the hard decisions they have to make. Do they choose to have children, knowing the ravages ahead? How do you deal with the frustration of losing independence by slow degrees, either the afflicted person or the person who loves them? How do you persevere in a life that is so different than the one on which you planned? The novel allows time to pass in the blank space between chapters so that each chapter shows a new stage in their lives rather than the slow, daily decline of the disease. While this takes away the drudgery of the everyday, it highlights Maddy and Dalt's tender and passionate embrace of life in the face of certain decline, showing their struggles at every stage, the black comedy they use to cope with this life sentence, and the full speed ahead courage and love that gets them through the lowest ebb. The descriptions of the physical world, the rivers and the wilderness are simply gorgeous and these early descriptions contrast heartbreakingly with the later grim reality of a body trapped and living with this thief of a disease. Fromm has written a stunning book not just about living with MS but also about love and nature and who we are deep down to our very souls. It will touch your heart and tear you up in equal measure. show less

A very disappointing book. A tale (and seemingly, a tall one), of a young, immature, naïve boy who decides college is too difficult, and on a whim, takes a position with Idaho Fish and Game. His job is to spend a winter alone in the wilderness, protecting a bed of salmon eggs. Never mind that the author has absolutely no experience in anything other than swimming and heavy drinking. He has no clue of how to survive in the wild, other than having read a few “old mountain man” books. show more Never cut wood, never camped in the cold, never even cooked before. Despite being entrusted by Fish and Game, he manages to break almost every game law in the book with his trusty homemade black powder rifle, including poaching a moose, grouse, squirrels, raccoons, etc. He single-handedly kills a bobcat with a stick, and chases after a wounded bear, armed with only a hatchet. A more foolhardy person would be difficult to find. And, to top it all off, at the end of his “adventure”, he abandons, without a second glance, his dog, the only true friend he had to see him through the winter.
It is said that God watches over and protects fools. Even He must have had his hands full with this character. show less

A very disappointing book. A tale (and seemingly, a tall one), of a young, immature, naïve boy who decides college is too difficult, and on a whim, takes a position with Idaho Fish and Game. His job is to spend a winter alone in the wilderness, protecting a bed of salmon eggs. Never mind that the author has absolutely no experience in anything other than swimming and heavy drinking. He has no clue of how to survive in the wild, other than having read a few “old mountain man” books. show more Never cut wood, never camped in the cold, never even cooked before. Despite being entrusted by Fish and Game, he manages to break almost every game law in the book with his trusty homemade black powder rifle, including poaching a moose, grouse, squirrels, raccoons, etc. He single-handedly kills a bobcat with a stick, and chases after a wounded bear, armed with only a hatchet. A more foolhardy person would be difficult to find. And, to top it all off, at the end of his “adventure”, he abandons, without a second glance, his dog, the only true friend he had to see him through the winter.
It is said that God watches over and protects fools. Even He must have had his hands full with this character. show less

Midway through his college career as a wildlife biology major at the University of Montana, Pete Fromm's life takes a little detour. Fueled by his love of exploring nature solo, and most of all, by his college roommate's books full of romanticized feats of mountain men, Fromm makes a spur of the moment decision to apply for a job guarding salmon eggs. For seven months. In an isolated wilderness. In the dead of winter. More than anything, Pete Fromm wanted some mountain man stories of his own show more to tell, and getting paid to guard a couple million salmon eggs seemed just the way to do it. So, after one thoughtless phone call, endless supply shopping, and a few too many booze-fueled going away parties, incredibly amateur mountain man Fromm found himself preparing for months of total isolation with nary a clue as to what surviving alone in the wilderness would entail.

It's nearly mind-blowing that a tale that has at its core the unbelievable isolation and boredom of an Idaho wilderness winter would be so captivating a read. Fromm's stories and his descriptions of the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness capture the rawness and cruel beauty of its winter that oft goes unobserved. With revealing descriptions of the scenery accompanied by powerful tales of wildlife surviving a hostile environment where survival seems impossible, Fromm reveals the dangerous magnificence of this wintry landscape in a way that few, if any, others ever could. Fromm himself is a sympathetic narrator as he seems to get on-the-job training in "mountain manhood." We go along with him as he learns hard lessons about what works and what doesn't, what it looks and feels like to hunt for food for survival, and, of course, that being a mountain man isn't nearly as fantastic as it seems in all the books, not to mention that he probably should have brought a few more than six books along when he agreed to spend 7 months virtually alone.

Fromm's constant inner battle between loving and owning his untouched wilderness and his desperate desire to get out and see another human face is all too convincing. When spring comes and people start entering the place he has come to think of his own, it feels, even to us, like an invasion of sorts. Foolish though his endeavor may have seemed at the outset, in the end, Fromm certainly emerged with the great mountain man stories he was looking for and much more. show less