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Living High: An Unconventional Autobiography
Book by Burn, June
292 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1992
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
February 25, 2018
Loved this book
Love this area of our planet.
Recommend it highly
Then go rowing.
Love this area of our planet.
Recommend it highly
Then go rowing.
August 8, 2014
I picked up a copy of "Living High" at the Patos Lighthouse, a place in the far upper left hand corner of the continental US, and accessible only by boat. The book was there because it is of local interest: it is about a family that lived for years on some of the most inaccessible of the San Juan Islands. This is an interesting account of someone who lived life differently, and made it work. Recommended reading for anyone considering an alternative life style. A sweet memoir.
May 12, 2021
Old book recommended in Dear Fahrenheit 451. Very good autobiography of a family in the 30's who decided to retire at their young age and work to maintain a family at an older age. They took off and homesteaded on Puget Sound Island--then got a job as teachers in remote NORTH Alaska on the Bering Sea. Then they had kids and began treks across America with no money. One sang songs and passed hats around and the other wrote for newspapers and stories etc. Very good descriptions of snow and weather in a lot of these places. I liked it.
November 5, 2010
A quirky biography of a couple who raised two boys on an island in the San Juans, Bellingham, among other places....It was interesting to read what life was like in the San Juans were at that time. But also the charm of the book is in reading of their adventures, their travels and how they got by on very little money. Interesting people....
900-999-geography-history
November 21, 2019920
February 3, 2024
This is a great description of life before and after the war of living of the land with a high interest and education of life.
June 14, 2022
[Cross-posted at https://closemindedpodcast.com/book-r...]
If you're looking to read something that generates powerful feelings of nostalgia and wanderlust, this is the book for you. The story of June and Farrar Burn is incredible. Our culture has changed so much since the 1920s and 30s; no longer could you traipse all over the country with no money, jobs, plans or possessions, and not just survive but thrive, relying on the goodness of strangers, the opportunity for short-term and immediate cash-paying work, and the rural countryside to provide sustenance for days and weeks at a time. Yet that is exactly what the Burns did, and for years. They intentionally lived in such a way as to never become reliant upon material things, to always be ready at a moment's notice to start a new adventure and follow the desire to explore.
Although the Burns wandered far and wide--from homesteading a tiny and previously uninhabited island, to spending a year teaching remote Eskimos in Alaska, from living out of their car while driving all over the USA, to living in an apartment in NYC--their home base ever remained the Pacific Northwest, specifically Bellingham, Washington and the beautifully rugged San Juan Islands. I spent much of my childhood in both those places, so the nostalgia was powerful and ever-present. It was sheer delight to flip back and forth from the prose to the map inside the front cover, following their adventures and comparing the details to places I know personally. Countless times while reading I pulled out my phone to swipe myself around the satellite imagery of Sentinel Island, Waldron, Orcas, and Bellingham, visualizing the locations of the story.
And yet. I felt a deep loneliness throughout the second half, and at the end. There was very little recounting of deep relationships they built with friends over the years, or of any rooted community within which they flourished. And there was virtually no spiritual content, beyond some light insinuations that the author was above anyone they met in their travels who express concern over their eternal souls. Their love for, and deep enjoyment of, the beauty of the natural world is tangible and infectious; I felt a deep connection over that shared joy. Yet to lack a corresponding recognition of the Creator is a saddening miss. Now, it could be that "Living High" purposefully limited its focus to just the details of the adventures and the Burns' creative attempts to meet their basic needs. Perhaps they were indeed spiritual creatures who recognized the truth, and it was just beyond the scope of her writing for this particular book.
I intend to read more about the Burns. They produced their own newspaper, The Puget Sounder, for a few years, and June had a regular column with The Bellingham Herald. It will be fun to track those down. What I do know for certain is that reading Living High has swelled an already existing longing to spend time in the PNW again, and to share it with my wife and kids. One day.
If you're looking to read something that generates powerful feelings of nostalgia and wanderlust, this is the book for you. The story of June and Farrar Burn is incredible. Our culture has changed so much since the 1920s and 30s; no longer could you traipse all over the country with no money, jobs, plans or possessions, and not just survive but thrive, relying on the goodness of strangers, the opportunity for short-term and immediate cash-paying work, and the rural countryside to provide sustenance for days and weeks at a time. Yet that is exactly what the Burns did, and for years. They intentionally lived in such a way as to never become reliant upon material things, to always be ready at a moment's notice to start a new adventure and follow the desire to explore.
Although the Burns wandered far and wide--from homesteading a tiny and previously uninhabited island, to spending a year teaching remote Eskimos in Alaska, from living out of their car while driving all over the USA, to living in an apartment in NYC--their home base ever remained the Pacific Northwest, specifically Bellingham, Washington and the beautifully rugged San Juan Islands. I spent much of my childhood in both those places, so the nostalgia was powerful and ever-present. It was sheer delight to flip back and forth from the prose to the map inside the front cover, following their adventures and comparing the details to places I know personally. Countless times while reading I pulled out my phone to swipe myself around the satellite imagery of Sentinel Island, Waldron, Orcas, and Bellingham, visualizing the locations of the story.
And yet. I felt a deep loneliness throughout the second half, and at the end. There was very little recounting of deep relationships they built with friends over the years, or of any rooted community within which they flourished. And there was virtually no spiritual content, beyond some light insinuations that the author was above anyone they met in their travels who express concern over their eternal souls. Their love for, and deep enjoyment of, the beauty of the natural world is tangible and infectious; I felt a deep connection over that shared joy. Yet to lack a corresponding recognition of the Creator is a saddening miss. Now, it could be that "Living High" purposefully limited its focus to just the details of the adventures and the Burns' creative attempts to meet their basic needs. Perhaps they were indeed spiritual creatures who recognized the truth, and it was just beyond the scope of her writing for this particular book.
I intend to read more about the Burns. They produced their own newspaper, The Puget Sounder, for a few years, and June had a regular column with The Bellingham Herald. It will be fun to track those down. What I do know for certain is that reading Living High has swelled an already existing longing to spend time in the PNW again, and to share it with my wife and kids. One day.
December 15, 2010
A fairly interesting account.
February 3, 2012
Fascinating book about a family living in the Pacific Northwest. The parents choose to live without many amenities so they don't work much (conventional work). They do experience nature a lot!
February 19, 2018
Where has this book been all my life?!
Read
October 4, 2015Very interesting
January 11, 2016
Interesting from the perspective of Northwest History and the San Juan Islands in the first half of the 20th century and what little is really to live on.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews