Impossible Beyond This Point: True Adventure Creating a Self-Sufficient Life in the Wilderness
Virgil Horn was an accomplished poet, sculptor and jewelry artist, as well as a credentialed school teacher and WWII veteran. After studying under John Neihardt, Virgil graduated from University of Missouri in 1950 with a degree in English. In 1972, Virgil chronicled the family’s extraordinary adventure in Hooray the Wilderness, but the manuscript was never published. Impossible Beyond This Point includes much of Virgil’s original writings, and although he departed this life in 1990, his legacy lives on in the hearts and minds of his sons who continue to use what they learned from him on a daily basis.  Marcella Horn grew up on a small farm in Sylmar, California. After she studied creative writing in college, Marcella had the first organic vegetable farm in the Sylmar area. In the early 1960s, Marcella and Virgil heard about a mine in Trinity County and both fell in love with the wilderness paradise they found at the end of a steep, narrow foot trail. Marcella has lived in the Trinity Alps more than 45 years and is still enchanted with the wild beauty of the mountains. Joel Horn, the youngest of Virgil and Marcella's three sons, was barely five years old when they moved to the wilderness. Growing up in the rugged Trinity Alps, Joel and his brothers learned how to do the numerous and varied tasks necessary for survival while carving out a life in their remote paradise. Living this self-reliant life and tutored by the best of teachers - their dad and hands-on experience - the boys achieved a level of self-sufficiency rarely seen in modern times. Impossible Beyond This Point combines his parents' writings with Joel’s own recollections to create a fascinating and entertaining account of the family's struggle and triumph creating a life of freedom in the wilderness.