At the turn of the millennium, I was 22 and unsure of where I was going in my life. With the opportunity to fulfill a childhood dream of living in a cabin in the woods at hand, I quit my job as a zookeeper in Nashville and packed up with a friend for Big Sky country. We arrived as clumsy "city slickers" with modest ambitions of cabin life, outdoor adventure, wildlife watching, simplicity, photography, wilderness survival, and more.

I explored my potentials for creative writing in a perfectly peaceful climate, and while I planned to remain focused and productive throughout the indefinite stay, I failed to account for one thing in particular: cabin fever. Time moves much slower in the woods during a Northwest Montana winter, and my urban upbringing left me highly unprepared.

Cabin fever became an all-encompassing driver for any endeavor and, at times, the berserk byproducts became a ridiculous cartoon parody of themselves. A parody of proper cabin living. This memoir resuscitates that madness and speaks to the "let's just pack up and get away" curiosities that we all have tucked away deep inside ourselves through themed reflections and playful exaggerations.

Fictional short stories written during the time in the cabin fuse throughout the Montana memoir to give the entire book a refreshingly unique life of its own. A fusion of fiction and reality that only cabin fever could stir up.