When John is asked to spend the summer alone up in the haymeadow, everything changes. Alone that is, except for 6,000 sheep in his care, two horses, four dogs, a visiting grizzly bear and a pack of coyotes.

This is a survival story with a difference. A young man spends his fourteenth summer living through one catastrophe after another. In the process he learns all about the wilderness, human resilience, and his own lonely father.