Nowick Gray harks to the tradition of Emerson and Thoreau in portraying his "life in the woods," the mountains of interior British Columbia.
"I spent the last two decades of the twentieth century nestled in a mountain valley in southeast British Columbia, sequestered in a home of my own making. I had wished to enjoy the privilege of proximate wilderness, and I was willing to take on the challenge of creating a sustainable livelihood in such a place. With my own efforts and help from my partner, friends and neighbors, I cleared land and carved a homestead out of the bush. So easily said, and a decade of hard work done. ... On the wings of that stage the surrounding mountains offered up their pleasures: hiking and camping, swimming in summer lakes, backcountry skiing in winter....
"More often, the outdoors served as backdrop to my internal landscape. Drawn outside in warm sunny weather, I would bring along an intermediating distraction, a different sort of tool- book, notepad, flute-with a headful of questions and new impressions to ponder en route to a random destination.... This, then, is 'My Country'-personal explorations of body and spirit, in the time and setting of my BC homestead, community, and surrounding mountain wilderness."
