This collection is about how the forest gazes upon man—and how man cannot bear that gaze.

In "The Wendigo," a hunt in the Canadian wilderness turns into a nightmarish encounter with an ancient forest spirit, which shatters the body and consciousness of one of the characters, and with it, the others' faith in a familiar, rational world. In "The Willows," two travelers find themselves in a strange, almost unreal landscape where nature comes alive, and the whisper of the wind becomes a harbinger of something cosmically hostile. In "The Man Whom the Trees Loved," a quiet love of nature gradually turns into obsession and the slow dissolution of the human self in the will of the forest.

"The Wendigo" is three variations on one disturbing theme: what happens to man when civilization retreats, and true wilderness—ancient, impersonal, indifferent—finally responds to his gaze.

Read the original, without adaptations or abridgements!