Christine Byl's Dirt Work adeptly intermingles stories of life as a trail dog--"a laborer who works in the woods maintaining, repairing, building, and designing trails"--with reflections on her natural surroundings. The stories are grounded by the ax, rock bar, chainsaw, boat, skid steer and shovel she learns to use to clear deadfalls, haul away brush, clean ditches and build rock staircases and log walkways. Cold, dirty and wet are some of the adjectives Byl consistently uses to describe her 10- to 14-hour days slogging through thick brush or fording icy cold rivers thigh deep to reach a designated work site.
Covering 16 years and hundreds of miles of trails in the Glacier and Denali national parks--plus one steadfast relationship--Byl reflects on the tools she needed, her fellow trail dogs, the wildness that surrounds her and the meaning of labor--hard, physical labor, the kind that either makes or breaks a person. Byl discovers herself amid the sweat, bugs, dirt and dirty jokes, and rejoices in the way her body feels and responds to the demands she places on it. Her expressive and descriptive prose opens the doorway to a hard but fulfilling way of life that few people notice or get to experience firsthand. "[The] outdoors," she reminds us, "is not playground but homeschool, where I am taught to settle in, over and over until being outside isn't about endurance or leisure, but life." --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer