Diana Phillips, daughter of Canadian folk legend Pan Phillips, shares
more extraordinary tales about her life on the ranch in the remote
British Columbian backcountry.
Two years after publishing Beyond the Chilcotin, her remarkable memoir
about growing up on her famous father's pioneer ranch in the Chilcotin,
Diana Phillips continues her story. Discouraged by a huge loss of cattle
to grizzlies on killing sprees, Pan sells the Home Ranch and decides to
set up a fishing and guiding venture on nearby Tsetzi Lake. Diana spends
a couple of seasons working with her father at the very rustic lodge,
now catering to the needs of guests paying for a wilderness experience,
rather than a cattle operation, but soon follows the call of ranch life
back to the Home Ranch, until she marries and gets a cabin and land of
her own nearby.
Working her ranch and raising her young family, as well as helping out a
series of owners at Home Ranch, Diana survives lean times and becomes a
masterful rancher in her own right--driving cattle along rugged trails
to and from Nazko, leading hunts in the Ilgachuz Mountains and midwifing
stubborn calves, not to mention fending off grizzlies and mounting
rescue missions for all manner of strays.
Diana's incredible memory for detail--from the taste of strawberry jam
and bannock, and the beauty of a poplar grove in fall, to the time she
taught a rude drunk a lesson by hitting him repeatedly in the head with
her boot--makes her account of a near-pioneer life in the Blackwater
country an inspiring and entertaining read.
