Gripping true adventure stories—from the Mojave to the Antarctic—reveal one woman's wild affair with the earth. For Lucy Jane Bledsoe, wilderness had always been a source of peace. But during one disastrous solo trip in the wintry High Sierra she came face to face with a crisis: the wilderness no longer felt like home. The Ice Cave recounts Bledsoe's wilderness journeys as she recovers her connection with the wild and discovers the meanings of fear and grace. These are Bledsoe's gripping tales of fending off wolves in Alaska, encountering UFOs in the Colorado Desert, and searching for mountain lions in Berkeley. Her memorable story "The Breath of Seals" takes readers to Antarctica, the wildest continent on earth, where she camped out with geologists, biologists, and astrophysicists. These fresh and deeply personal narratives remind us what it means to be simply one member of one species, trying to find food and shelter—and moments of grace—on our planet.Lucy Jane Bledsoe is the author of two novels: This Wild Silence, a Lambda Literary Award Finalist, and Working Parts, winner of an American Library Association Award for literature. Her collection Sweat: Stories and a Novella was also a Lambda Literary Award Finalist. She is the recipient of many other awards and literary fellowships and has worked as a scriptwriter for National Geographic and other educational organizations. She teaches in the Masters of Creative Writing Graduate Program at the University of San Francisco.