Posts Tagged ‘wilderness’
Surviving the Island of Grace, by Leslie Leyland Fields
Surviving the Island of Grace, by Leslie Leyland Fields Surviving the Island of Grace is a beautiful and haunting memoir of a woman who left the East Coast and moved to Alaska looking for a new life. In brilliant prose, Leslie Leyland Fields tells her story of adapting to life on a wilderness island without…
Read MoreThe Flight of the Arctic Tern, by Constance Helmericks
In June of 1947, Alaskan adventurers, Constance and Bud Helmericks, returned to the arctic wilderness in their first airplane. Originally published in 1952, Connie’s fifth book, The Flight of the Arctic Tern (342 pages), chronicles their lives from constructing a log cabin in the Brooks Range to flying the Arctic coast in search of their Inuit…
Read MoreDown the Wild River North, by Constance Helmericks
In suburban Arizona, 1964, Connie Helmericks announced to her two daughters, 12-year-old Ann and 14-year-old Jean, “We’re going to make a canoe expedition to the Arctic Ocean.” And for two successive summers, that’s exactly what they did. Down the Wild River North (328 pages) is the vividly told story of their adventures in the remote northern reaches…
Read MoreWe Fought the Road, by Christine and Dennis McClure
We Fought the Road (224 pages) is the story of the building of the Alaska-Canada Highway during World War II. More than one third of the 10,607 builders were black; thought to be incapable of performing on a war front by many of their white commanding officers. Their task–which required punching through wilderness on a route…
Read MoreKlee Wyck Journal, by Lou McKee
After many years of paddling the waterways and outer coasts of the Pacific Northwest, author and artist Lou McKee planned a short kayaking trip near Vancouver Island with friends and family that unexpectedly became a yearly tradition. During the first trip that Pacific Northwestern summer, they chanced upon an enchanting stretch of beach and spent…
Read MoreTrusting the River, by Jean Aspen
Jean Aspen, daughter of arctic explorer and author Constance Helmericks, began life in the wilderness. Throughout six decades, the natural world has remained central to her. What began as a series of letters to her son, Lucas, when she and her husband Tom set out to search for a different future, evolved over the seasons…
Read MoreIditarod Memories, by Jon Van Zyle
Iditarod Memories (168 pages) is a celebration of beloved musher-artist Jon Van Zyle’s years of annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race posters. This 40th anniversary nostalgic collection includes Jon’s first 40 years of Iditarod posters, and, published for the first time ever, 40 years of limited edition lithographs. With stories written by his wife, Jona Van…
Read MoreAlaska’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 MoreHooked! by Leslie Layland Fields
The rousing sea stories are all here: The dramas of near-death battles, the sickening tragedy of lovers and friends lost to the waters – but this is not the whole story. Hooked! (172 pages) represents an extraordinary holistic view of Alaskan fishing: Not just the dying, but the living; not just the obsessive doing of…
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