Trusting 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 into a many snapshots of her remarkable life. All those seemingly random threads have woven the tapestry of her journey and the journey of the river flowing by the remote cabin. In Trusting the River, she closes the circle of her mother's books and her own early work, Arctic Daughter.

ebook

Published May 3, 2017

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