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In this bitingly funny and often surprising memoir, award-winning author and groundbreaking comedian Bob Smith offers a meditation on the vitality of the natural world - and an intimate portrait of his own darkly humorous and profoundly authentic response to a life-changing illness. In Treehab - named after a retreat cabin in rural Ontario - Smith muses how he has "always sought the path less traveled." He rebuffs his diagnosis of ALS as only an unflappable stand-up comic could ("Lou Gehrig's Disease? But I don't even like baseball!") and explores his complex, fulfilling experience of fatherhood, both before and after the onset of the disease. Stories of his writing and performing life - punctuated by hilariously cutting jokes that comedians tell only to each other - are interspersed with tales of Smith's enduring relationship with nature: boyhood sojourns in the woods of upstate New York and adult explorations of the remote Alaskan wilderness; snakes and turtles, rocks and minerals; open sky and forest canopy; God and friendship - all recurring touchstones that inspire him to fight for his survival and for the future of his two children.
