Trail Creek: A North Fork Saga

By Daniel G. Block (Indie author/North Air Entertainment, 2025)

Genre: Non-fiction – Memoir

Pages (print): 334

Via: Author request

Note: We received a complimentary copy of this book for honest review.

Other note: Trail Creek was “Originally written by the late Dr. Daniel G. Block, professor of Biology at the University of Montana, Western and carefully edited and prepared for publication by his grandson, Zach Block with the assistance of the North Fork Landowners Association.”

“Some day we will return – and cry together.”

Throw another log on the fire and grab a hot cuppa for this highly readable and imminently engaging memoir by the late Daniel G. Block, educator, biologist, and natural storyteller.  As bright as a summer sun and as big as a Montana sky, this true story of love, life, and adventure on “the last true frontier” pulls at the heartstrings as it whispers of memories of early, unforgettable years on the North Fork of the Flathead River in Montana and the “tonic of the wilderness.” Set largely in the post-WWII years of 1946 through the early 1950s, Trail Creek: A North  Fork Saga is Walden-esque and Walton-esque in both style and substance.

This story starts with author Dan Block and his new bride, Gerane, age 17, leaving Milwaukee for Montana in April 1946 with a plan to become mink farmers.  What follows is an absorbing, fascinating account of life on “the last American frontier” a place “where snow falls six feet deep, bears roam the woods, and where only the night sky is crowded. Through firewood shortages, frozen pipes, lost horses, wild neighbors and trout-filled streams, Dan and Gerane carve a life from scratch on the old Price homestead near Trail Creek – fifty miles from town and a thousand miles from comfort.”

“Our cabin was built with unknown talent, out of nothing and out of everything; the land and its forest, the river and its stones, little money, more sweat, and lots of love.”

Included are hand-cranking cars. Sub-zero temperatures. Dee hunting. No phone or radio. Berry picking. Garden and goat tending. Weatherizing. A gravity-flow water tank Treacherous road conditions. Frontier living sans electricity or indoor plumbing. Each chapter glides seemingly into the next, in roughly chronological order following the seasons. Much more. Three sections of “photo albums” are included, as is an Epilogue and an Appendix.

“We … never considered ourselves poor; just with a minimal cash flow. But we were rich in stars, mountains, trees, fresh air, the beauty of winer’s silence, and a wood fire.”

Sparkles, Dances

The writing sparkles and dances like a bull trout on a line in places. Like, January’s “Cold days and iron nights” and “the ice jams of King Frost.” Elsewhere, it almost hums with reverence for nature and The Great Outdoors. A desert-dry scirocco of levity peppers some pages, adding opportunity for chuckles and grins.

Caveats

After a while, tales of snow, sinking up to the Ford’s axles in mud, snow, trapping, snow, ice, frozen brake lines, snow, and more mud gets a little redundant. So, we got kinda bored in the middle. Also, there are too many descriptions of killing or mistreating animals. Shooting horses for mink food? Ugh. Ditto killing elk, deer, mink, beaver moose, bear – you name it. Double ugh. We did not appreciate the part about neighbor Harry Holcomb kicking his dog, Shep, or the “puppies on the bottom” stew. So. No. Funny.

Back on Track

Thankfully, the narrative gets back on track and picks up steam later as Dan works with the Forest Service on the Flathead national Forest – everythi8gn from felling trees to fixing trails to putting our forest fires and once, a stint as a camp cook. Then we follow Dan and Gerane to graduate school, a teaching career and beyond. After five years of learning, loving, and growing but never really getting ahead, the Blocks leave Trail Creek to pursue work and careers elsewhere.

“Trail Creek had become home to us, to return to, if necessary, but not a place to make a living.”

“Trail Creek had been Dad’s dream, and ours. When it didn’t work out the way we expected he quit dreaming and our dreams changed. One way you know you are alive is hurting – it doesn’t have to be physical. We left Trail Creek together.”

The Bottom Line

Hauntingly beautiful, Trail Creek’s Epilogue ends with the author musing about a quote from Lord Gray of Falloon’s book, Trout Fishing. As quoted by Block, Gray writes, “The time must come to all of us, who live long, when memory is more than prospect. An angler who has reached this stage and reviews his life will be grateful that he has been an angler, for he will look back upon days radiant with happiness, peaks and peaks of enjoyment that are not less bright because they are lit in memory by the light of a setting sun.”

“As we closed up the cabin and left with our few belongings, Gerane said, ‘There is something about your own piece of land that takes hold of your heart and never lets go. Some day we well come back – and cry together.’”

A Memory in the Forest

Block says the way Lord Gray felt about fishing is similar to the way he and Gerane felt about Trail Creek. “We knew that one can never go back to old memories,” he writes, “ yet both of us felt that Trail Creek was different, not a town, not just a homestead, but a memory in the forest. It deserved one last visit.” Which is exactly what he and Gerane do, some forty years after departing their Trail Creek homestead in the 1950s. Of the shared “wealth of experiences” during their years on the North Fork, Block reflects, “It is over now, a purge of painful memories, a substitution of better ones. And that is the way it should be.”

In his beloved classic, A River Runs Through It, Norman Maclean closes his reflections on his growing-up years in Missoula, Montana with: Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.

Poignant and powerful, these lines have one of us – Her Royal Wussness – reaching for more tissue. Every time. That’s what finishing Trail Creek feels like. Like you’re saying goodbye to an old friend, “lost in silent thoughts and memories.” Indeed, this book reminded The ‘Ole Curmudgeon of her growing-up years in national parks. (Her dad was a seasonal park service ranger at Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming and later, Mount Rainer National Park in Washington state.)

Evocative, elegiac, and thoroughly compelling, Trail Creek is both beautiful and bittersweet. The narrative brims with life, love, and longing reminiscent of Thoreau, Earl Hamner, Jr., Norman Maclean, and Floyd Schmoe, the first naturalist at Mount Rainier National Park.

We had some issues with this book as noted above. But there’s so much we could relate to and love. Thus, on the whole, Trail Creek is so warm and rich, we didn’t want it to end. Some day we will return…

Our Rating: 4.0

Trail Creek: A North Fork Saga is set for publication on July 1, 2026 in both paperback and Ebook. It will be available on Amazon “and independent bookstores throughout Montana.”