Posts Tagged ‘Adventure’
Alaska’s Artist Jon Van Zyle, by Jon Van Zyle
As a youth, Jon remembers his artistic mother encouraging him and his twin brother to express their creativity. It worked. Both Jon and his twin brother are professional artists: Jon in Alaska and his brother in Hawaii. His love of the outdoors lured Jon to Alaska and the entire 49th State has become his inspiration. …
Read MoreMidnight Sun, Arctic Moon, by Mary Albanese
Midnight Sun, Arctic Moon (216 pages) follows a young upstate New York woman who begins the adventure of a life-time as she moves away from her safe and conventional path. She is unable to resist the excitement and challenge of a chance to become a geological explorer in Alaska, where she maps remote wilderness areas…
Read MoreBering Sea Blues, by Joe Upton
This a gripping memoir of a winter season of crab-fishing in the Bering Sea, filled with scary moments, killer ice, dangerous work, and-for the lucky ones-financial rewards. For others, survival was their reward. Just 25, Joe Upton was the youngest guy aboard when the 104-foot Flood Tide pulled out of Seattle in March 1971 headed…
Read MoreIn Search of the Kuskokwim, by Stephen Spurr
The United States knew relatively little about Alaska prior to the turn of the century when the Klondike Gold Rush was about to attract thousands of stampeders north, many of them spilling over into Alaska as more gold was discovered on the Yukon River and her tributaries. The government had few reliable maps of the…
Read MoreThe Accidental Adventurer, by Barbara Washburn
Barbara Washburn never set out to become a mountaineering pioneer, but she wasn’t content to be a stay-at-home wife, either. In 1947, defying social convention, Washburn became the first woman to climb Alaska’s Mt. McKinley. Accidental Adventures (192 pages) chronicles her journeys with her husband, Bradford Washburn, on other expeditions to Alaska, the Grand Canyon,…
Read MoreTales of Alaska’s Bush Rat Governor, by Jay Hammond
Jay Hammond’s hilarious, adventure-packed autobiography is filled with candid insights on the independent people and faraway places of our nation’s largest state. “In 1946 Hammond, a Methodist minister’s son from New York State and a Marine pilot during WW II, realized his dream of moving to Alaska. Once there he had many jobs, including trapping,…
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