Book excerpt: A Language All Their Own, a Life Unto Themselyes was inspired by the author's experiences in the float-camps of Southeast Alaska. In years past, logging camps could be found hugging the rugged, rocky shoreline, floating hamlets buoyed from logs harvested out of the same forests that provided the inhabitants with their livelihood. Moored a world apart, the only way in or out of the camps was by boat or plane. Some camps were larger, some smaller, nestled in quiet coves, bays and inlets; shrouded in fog; drenched by the rain; occasionally warmed by the sun or locked in the ice of winter.