Blue Creek Bride: A Kiwi rides into the Rockies with her warden husband

Blue Creek Bride begins with a flashback to a melt-down I had near the end of a twenty six kilometre horseback journey with my husband, Phil. He was a back country park warden with Parks Canada in Jasper National Park. We were newly married and I was accompanying him for the first time into his district of Blue Creek. After a brief explanation of the curious chain of events that led to us meeting, I begin a chronological description of the five trips I made with Phil over the summers of 2002/2003. Being a Kiwi fresh from five years living in London, UK, and having not ridden for over twenty years, the Canadian wilderness experience was often a difficult one. Yet, as I was having an adventure with Phil that seemed like something out of a movie, it also held some of the very best times of my life. The book tells of learning horsemanship from Phil; coping with wearisome hours in the saddle and being alternately amused and thwarted by my saddle horse, Smoky; getting used to domestic life in a log cabin with no electricity or running water; working as a team with Phil on various warden tasks; travelling with other wardens; doing battle with mosquitoes; and overshadowing everything, being awed by the beauty of the Rockies. To sum up, Blue Creek Bride encompasses the journey towards competence of a novice in the back country. It is told with honesty and humour and provides entertaining reading.