If you want to write in a mature and interesting way, you have to have sympathy for everyone that's involved.

It feels like people talk a lot, in their relationships and in therapy. But my family wasn't like that. My dad wasn't and I wasn't. Things were said, but via the language of action.

If you want to write in a mature and interesting way, you have to have sympathy for everyone that's involved.

My dad felt pretty strongly that I know about the basic workings of a plane and so he taught me how to read and set the instruments, as well as the basics of taking off and landing.

When I was growing up, there were no cell phones and no roads into the bush, and so if something happened to your plane, that was serious. Nobody was coming to rescue you.

I made myself a rule: write out of love. And when you love somebody, you have to tell the truth about who they are - not the cute "truth" in your head of who they are, the one where you did everything right and they did everything wrong.

I wasn't in a position that some other memoirists are, dealing with families who fed them meth, or kidnapped them, or did something that would make the writer not want to see that family again. I wanted to see my family. I wanted to celebrate them. I was proud of who we were, in the wilderness, floating down rapids or hiking over glaciers, and everywhere else.