TRAIL CREEK: A NORTH FORK SAGA

One day, while clearing out his garage, Zach Block came across an unmarked manila envelope tucked into a large box of childhood mementos. Intrigued, he opened it up and found an old memoir written by his paternal grandfather, Dan Block. Zach didn't know how these pages ended up in a box of his own belongings, nor could he ask Dan, who died in 2016 at the age of 96. So, spurred on by curiosity, he decided to sit down and read his grandfather's memoir, eager to discover what it was all about.

After serving in the military during World War II, 26-year-old Dan Block and his young bride, Gerane, decided to leave their home in Milwaukee to start a new life in the wilds of northwest Montana. Despite Dan's unfamiliarity with his new home in a region known as the North Fork, he drove there with his wife, equipped with nothing more than hopes, dreams, and a map peppered with areas still unsurveyed.

In his memoir, Dan wrote, "Most of the North Fork was never meant for people to make a living. A closer look at the map years earlier could have told me that. Today, the clues jump out, with areas named Dead Horse Ridge, Kintla Glacier, Starvation Creek, and Frozen Lake, all within a day's foot travel from our cabin. In truth, the only name I saw was Trail Creek, or on the old maps, Yakinikak, an Indian phrase meaning Trail of the Moose".

Located in the Flathead National Forest, the Blocks' cabin in the North Fork, which Dan built himself, was six miles south of the Canadian border and seventy miles away from civilization. It was in a remote valley populated by all major herbivores, such as elk, deer, moose, mountain sheep, and goats, as well as all major carnivores, including coyotes, wolves, wolverines, lynxes, mountain lions, and grizzly bears. The North Fork is unique as it is the only place in the United States with a complete biological system.

For five years, Dan and Gerane scraped out a living by fishing, trapping, and farming mink while Dan also worked for the U.S. Forest Service. They even continued to spend summers at the cabin when Dan studied wildlife biology at the University of Montana. He focused his graduate studies on the bull trout that still swim up the North Fork to spawn every autumn.

Years later, Dan became a professor who shared his passion for biology, literature, wilderness, and self-reliance with generations of students. He earned a doctorate in wildlife technology from the University of Montana and became a much-beloved professor there. He was also known for being a great writer and storyteller, which brings us full circle to his grandson, Zach, who one day came across an old memoir written by his grandfather.

Upon securing his family's blessing, Zach spent the next year working with historians to posthumously publish Dan's memoir and preserve the history his grandfather had etched onto those pages. The resulting book, 'Trail Creek: A North Fork Saga', is part nature journal and part autobiography, weaving together Dan's accounts of his daily life on the North Fork.

'Trail Creek: A North Fork Saga' is a 374-page non-fiction book written by Daniel G. Block and edited by his grandson, Zachary. A physical version will be released soon, or else you can click here to purchase a digital copy via Amazon.