Halfway into wildlife photographer Michio Hoshino¡¯s book of essays about the first 16 years he lived in Alaska, he slips his finger into the mouth of a hibernating black bear. He then blissfully buries his face in the bear¡¯s belly, writing that it was an attempt to ¡°store this remote and savage smell in my memory as though breathing deeply with my mind.¡±
Published in 1994, ¡°The Traveling Tree¡± was reprinted 57 times and has sold more than half a million copies in Japan. Less than two years after its release, at age 43, Hoshino was killed by a brown bear while working on Russia¡¯s Kamchatka Peninsula.
The Traveling Tree, by Michio Hoshino. Translated by Eli K.P. William. 232 pages. GAIA, nonfiction.
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