Winter Sign : University of Minnesota Press : 9780816629695 : 0816629692 : 01 Nov 1998 : The focus of Jim dale Huot-Vickery's life is a remote cabin in the northern wilderness of Minnesota's Boundary Waters region. More often that not, it is winter here, a fierce, beautiful season that dominates all living things with its relentless cold grip. This is the inspiration for Winter Sign, the profound story of fifteen years of surviving the seven-month-long odyssey of winter in the far north. Against this backdrop, Huot-Vickery writes authoritatively on the ecology of the area and philosophically about winter's probing of the human spirit. He describes the animals surrounding him - the wolves, deer, fox, and other wildlife who draw him into their age-old struggle. He experiences love, pain, grief, and circles around paradoxes and themes that invade the land and his life: nature's beauty and bounty pitted against danger and death.