Arctic Son: Fulfilling the Dream

by Jean Aspen

The chronicle of a family’s first year alone in Alaskan wilderness, Arctic Son is a poetic journey of discovery into what we value in life.
In 1992 Jean Aspen and her husband, Tom, left Arizona and took their young son to live in Alaska's interior wilderness, building a cabin out of logs, hunting for food, and letting the vast, harsh beauty of the Arctic close in around them. While Jean had faced Alaska's wilderness before in a life‑altering experience she described in Arctic Daughter. This journey would be different. Dogged by sickness and hardships, cut off from the rest of the world, her family faced not only a test of endurance, but of its own well‑being and survival.
From a daily struggle against the elements to an encounter with a grizzly bear at arm's length, from moments of breathtaking beauty and self‑realization to a harrowing, six‑hundred‑mile river passage back to civilization, Arctic Son chronicles fourteen remarkable months in the Alaskan wilderness. At once a portrait of courage and a heart‑pounding adventure story, Arctic Son portrays a family's extraordinary journey into America's last frontier.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction

417 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

My life began in the Arctic wilds. My adventurous parents filmed documentaries and my mother, Constance Helmericks, wrote bestselling books about their lives. When I was twenty-two, I returned to Alaska’s remote Brooks Range with a friend. In the spring of 1992 we paddled down the Yukon River and pulled our loaded canoe up a tributary into the mountains. Here we built a cabin and spent much of four years living from the land. This is the story of my first book, Arctic Daughter: a Wilderness Journey, which became a Reader’s Digest selection.
I have always belonged to wilderness. As I matured, I yearned to share the beauty and freedom of this life with my husband, Tom Irons, and our young son, Luke. In 1992 we invited a woman friend to join us for fourteen months alone in the wilds. My second book, Arctic Son: Fulfilling the Dream, tells of building our cabin beside the river of my youth, and of our month-long canoe journey back to civilization the following summer. We recorded our lives and later produced a documentary that has shown on PBS stations across the nation.
Now in our late sixties, Tom and I make our home in a small Alaskan town, and still migrate back to our cabin each spring for three months afoot in the wilds. I will soon publish my memoir, Trusting the River and we are editing the second in a trilogy of documentaries about our lives.
Our purpose is to encourage others to responsibly embody their deepest longings, to be gracious to one another, and to honor our Planet home. I have a baccalaureate degree in biology with honors in English, and one in nursing. You may read more about our lives and see photos at http://www.jeanaspen.com.

Wild Blessings,
Jeanie Aspen 2016

Reviews

[SR · Rating 2 out of 5]

Way too cutesy! The son is a whiny, spoiled kid.

[Bunny Bolaños · Rating 1 out of 5]

I love memoirs, this was terrible. Pages and pages about how she respects moose and then decides to kill multiple moose. They treat outsiders awfully like no one could understand their hippie outdoorsy quest. It’s arrogant and annoying. I could barely get through it.

[Vicki Rinne · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Arctic Son" contained beautiful descriptions of living in the isolated wilds of Alaska. I admired the courage and dedication of the entire family, especially the husband, Tom, who supported his wife's dream of living off the land, including building a cabin--not from a model kit, but from scratch. The book is at its best in describing the land and nature that surrounds the family, and detailing the challenges that they face.

Frankly, I did not like Aspen's determination to continue with their plan to stay in Alaska, even when Tom was sick and might die. And, it seemed to me that, although she had previously lived in the Alaskan wilderness ("Arctic Daughter") and was experienced with survival living, there were some poor decisions and lack of preparation that made the narrative frustrating. But, I guess that is a fair depiction of life in general. Although not one of my favorites, I still liked the book.

[Lisa Kearns · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved Jean Aspen's first book, Arctic Daughter, and have read it several times. So I was eager to read this second book and enjoy this return to the Arctic with her husband Tom and their son Luke. It seemed especially nice that her son would continue the love affair with the Arctic, bringing the family full circle. As a middle aged woman myself, I identified with her worries that she and Tom were too old and soft to succeed.

But my impression throughout the book is that this was HER dream, and her husband and son were just along for the trip. Her son especially was unhappy, lonely, whiny, defiant and argumentative throughout their whole time there. He did backflips of joy when they returned to civilization. Even Tom told her he was ready for her to put her past aside, and that he was tired of living in it.

I rarely felt any affection or closeness between Jean and Tom. She was very concerned when he was sick, but mainly about what she would do if he died. She seems to be a middle aged force of nature, commander of the family, and the font of all knowledge. Even towards the end of the trip, when all three of them had weathered 14 months in the wilderness, it was Jean who looked at the river and commanded "let's go!" as if only her assessment of the river's safety was valid.

I was also somewhat taken aback by Jean's unflattering description of her husband. She describes herself with words like "direct, gray-green eyes", "strong jaw and high cheekbones, full lips and even teeth," "handsome" and even "considered beautiful". Meanwhile she describes Tom as "a bit heavy," asymmetrical face," "nose drifting off to one side," "balding", "unfashionably dressed" and wearing "thick glasses" for his myopic vision.

She also spouted an awful lot of New Age philosophy, especially with Luke, who would have benefited from a firm hand and decisive parenting. I found myself skimming pages to get to the wilderness living, while Jean philosophized about the meaning of life.

But overall, this book is a good read. I loved reading of how they built the cabin, and shot the moose and dried its meat. She's a whiz in the kitchen, turning out great meals with basic staples. She made the long dark winter and extreme cold seem real to her readers.

I gave this book three stars because I didn't care for her personality as much as I liked the adventures and the descriptions of their life in the middle of the Arctic.

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I rated this book "amazing" because so many things that occur in it are so far beyond my ability to handle! Arctic Son chronicles the journey of one family and a friend as they set up housekeeping from the ground up in the deep arctic. After a great deal of thought and preparation, Jean Aspen embarks upon a quest - a word she uses often - to share her experience of the far North with her second husband and young son. They arrange to be dropped off by plane in the middle of the woods with a plan to build a cabin, stay a year and a half, then canoe the 600 miles back to civilization.

The book is beautifully written with detailed and eloquent descriptions of mind-numbing beauty and excessive conditions: billions of eager mosquitoes, sudden violent storms, encounters with bears, the challenge of building a home out of trees, illness, and the most frightening of all, trying to bring up and protect a six year old under these circumstances.

Ms. Aspen wrote Arctic Son over twenty years ago. I read it after I happened to recently see the documentary on TV that they made; she refers to the shooting of said film often in her book. At the end of the film one sees an assemblage of family photographs taken over the last 20 years until quite recently. At the very end I was shocked and saddened to see an "In Memory"note. Their son Luke, the 6 year old, died in his sleep in 2012 at age 26 after a tragically short but accomplished life.

Ms. Aspen struggles with her sensitivities, fears, and loves throughout her book and must be doing so still. People with this kind of creativity and endurance never cease to amaze me - blessings to all.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the author's further adventures in Alaska but she is no longer a 20 something. She returns to Alaska but this time with a husband and son and 20 years older. Her aging has an impact on her experience. What a great woman adventurer.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great stories & details about this woman's life living in the Artic with her husband and young son! AMAZING.

[DaShannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Memoir of a former student at Blanchester High and his family. They travel to Alaska to continue the wife's family tradition of living off the land.