RANGELEY — For decades, Wanda Ferguson has been delighting readers of The Rangeley Highlander with her stories about living on an animal trail in Sandy River Plantation. Now, she has brought those tales together in her new book, “Ayuh, That’s Life on the Moose Trail!”
A book launch event will be held from 3 to 4:30 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 18, at The Ecopelagicon, 7 Pond St.. The launch is free and open to the public.
Ferguson is also the author of “Mountain Gardening,” and “Over the Garden Fence: The Gardener’s Companion and Journal.” Her new book takes a humorous turn. In 1960, when she and her husband, Holman, bought their land near the junction of Route 4 and South Shore Drive, they had no idea that a well-established moose trail meandered through it — down from Dallas Plantation to the wetlands of Rangeley Lake’s Greenvale Cove. Year after year, moose spy on them through the windows and trample their gardens into worm food.
Inquisitive bears also pay unannounced visits, bobcats lounge in window flower boxes and Charlie the Skunk is an expected winter guest in the root cellar.
In “Ayuh, That’s Life on the Moose Trail!,” Ferguson reveals the tenacity and humor — as well as the many trials and errors — that it takes to coexist with forest animals at “the end of the line” in the mountains of western Maine. Part cultural history, part environmental advocacy, her tales conjure up the natural world around us and show how it, with all its inhabitants, can keep us grounded and steady in the course of our lives.
“Humans come and go,” Ferguson says, “but the land remains.”
The book is published by Liongrass Editions of East Wilton.
