What is real wilderness? During a week-long visit to the Brooks River in Alaska's Katmai National Park, noted naturalist and master storyteller Paul Schullery strives to answer that question. His wise and aware description of misadventure along the dream-perfect waterway-where anglers, hikers, and photographers share the landscape with Alaskan brown bears-examines our deeply felt need to connect with something really wild, in Alaska and in the rest of America. At once funny and frightening, alarming and hopeful, Real Alaska demonstrates once again why Schullery has been called "America's foremost citizen of the national parks."