Jean Aspen - Arctic Daughter: A Wilderness Journey

Arctic Daughter

A Wilderness Journey

Jean Aspen

Copyright 1988, 2015 by Jean Aspen.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission of the publisher.

Arctic Daughter was originally published in 1988 by Bergamot Books, Minneapolis, Minnesota (ISBN 9780943127019), and a Delta Expedition trade paperback was published in 1993 by Dell Publishing, a division of Bantam, Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc., with permission from Bergamot Books (ISBN 0-385-31400-0). A hardbound edition was published in 1993 by Menasha Ridge Press, Birmingham, Alabama (ISBN 9780897321211). Arctic Journey, an excerpt from the book, appeared in the November 1993 issue of Readers Digest (p. 189). An excerpt from Chapter 1 of Arctic Daughter was used with permission along with part of a chapter from Constance Helmericks book Down the Wild River North in Making Connections: Mother-Daughter Travel Adventures, edited by Wendy Knight and published by Seal Press in 2003.

Aspen, Jean.

Arctic daughter : a wilderness journey / by Jean Aspen.

pages cm

Originally published: Minneapolis, MN : Bergamot Books, 1988.

ISBN 978-1-941821-16-9 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-941821-58-9 (e-book)

1. Brooks Range (Alaska)Biography. 2. PioneersAlaskaBrooks RangeBiography. 3. AlaskaDescription and travel. 4. Frontier and pioneer lifeAlaskaBrooks Range. I. Title.

F912.B75A76 2015

979.8'7dc23

2014034764

Cover design: Jean Aspen and Vicki Knapton

Illustrations by Jean Aspen

Photographs by Jean Aspen, Phil Beisel, and Tom Irons

Map by Elizabeth Barnard

Published by Alaska Northwest Books

An imprint of

P.O. Box 56118

Portland, Oregon 97238-6118

503-254-5591

www.graphicartsbooks.com

For my mother, Constance Helmericks,

who taught me to dream.

Constance and Jeanie Helmericks, 1952.

Constance Helmericks, age twenty.

I love the summers in this land. But I also love the feel of winter winds against my cheek, when the snow squeals underfoot, and the ptarmigan, the white grouse, come whirling down from the Arrigetch Peaks once moreor any peaks in Alaska!to talk along the valley by my house. I love the colors of the bleak wastelands where nobody goes. When the circling sun falls low, and the leaves hang and rattle in the wind, and cranberries turn to mahogany brown, and frosted blueberries taste of wine, then my cabin on the river will be snug and tight against the arctic gale. When wild grass has turned to hay and the wild geese wing their way once more over mountain and valley to the southern land below, the canoe is put away and the snowshoe will appear. But when the Arctic turns to green again and the geese return with the sun, I shall take my canoe from the tall cache, and I shall travel on the river to see some new place.

We Live in the Arctic
Constance Helmericks, 1947

Jeanie, age twenty-five.

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I had just turned twenty-two and Phil was only a year older when we set forth into the arctic wilds. It was a time for testing ourselves and discovering our own strengths. In truth, I would never have envisioned such an undertaking nor had the tools to do it without my mother. There were, of course, others whose names I have forgotten that provided guidance and support along the way. I regret not paying closer attention, but at the time my need for independence blinded me to this greater community. With a few additions, I leave these acknowledgments as I wrote them in 1988.

Through their love and support, the following people helped create this book:

My mother, Constance Helmericks, inspired and championed our adventure;

Phils parents, Cliff and Marion Beisel, stood behind us with love while knowing not the journey;

Chris Olson, who died before I was born, and the generous Gwichin people of Venetie helped us stay alive.

My sister, Ann Helmericks, and her first husband, Steve Boice, retrieved us from Alaska and provided a home for me while I wrote the first drafts.

Friends who encouraged me in writing and rewriting: Charlotte Cardon, Sue Clemans, Terrel Miedaner, Celia Weber, and my beloved aunt, Janet Cutler.

Jennie Vemich and John Earl amended my creative spelling in days before spell-checkers.

Donald Sayner taught me illustration and welcomed me into his studio as I created these drawings.

Dr. Douglas Camfield guided my early prose and went to bat for me when I wanted to use this book as an honors English thesis at the University of Arizona.

My editor and first publisher, Barb Wieser, believed in me and worked to tighten my manuscript into a book.

Doug Pfeiffer, Kathy Howard, Vicki Knapton, Angie Zbornik, and Michelle Blair helped revive the book for a new generation. Lindsay Wolter and writer Nan Leslie guided the process.

My husband, Tom Irons, and our young son, Luke, stood unfailingly behind me, though the story wasnt theirs.

And of course, Phil Beisel, my youthful sweetheart, without whom this adventure and all that followed would never have happened.

Phil and Jeanie Beisel, 1975.

ALASKA

Phil and Jeanie, our first winter, 1972.

PROLOGUE

More than four decades have elapsed since two nave kids followed their dreams down the Yukon River and up into the mountains on a remarkable adventure. What for me began as a hiatus from college would ultimately become a lifetime centered on wilderness.

In updating my books for a new generation, I am grateful for this chance of amending some inadvertent slights and for the opportunity to add a note about sequence. In the original book I thought to honor the privacy of others by using pseudonyms, yet twenty years later when I again paddled out of the mountains with my husband, Tom, and our young son after another year in the wilderness, I was remembered in the little Indian village. Why, people asked me, did you change our names? Referencing my early journals, I now wish to set that record straight.

In addition, because Phil and I lived in the Brooks Range for nearly four years, some events were included that compress those seasons. For example, the hike to the Arctic Continental Divide occurred in the summer of 1977, but to keep the book a reasonable length, I originally placed it in 1973, where it remains. In rereading this time capsule of my life, I was tempted to amend and polish my youthful voice, but have generally left it frozen in time. What right have I to direct that hopeful girl from my height of sixty-four years? Let her have her adventures and ideas, her untarnished enthusiasm. Any who wish to follow her wandering footprints into maturity can do so with my other books and documentary, going where she could notacross the mysterious expanse of my lifetime.