![]() “Arctic Daughter: A Lifetime of Wilderness” and “Arctic Son: Fulfilling the Dream” are the first two of what has become a trilogy of documentaries. They wanted to share their experiences and whatever insights might emerge. While preparing for the move, the couple had borrowed money to buy professional video equipment and taught themselves to use it. “When one lives harmlessly in nature,” Jean said, “the land knows.”īaking shed at Kernwood (Photo from Jean Aspen and Tom Irons) ![]() They lived in respectful peace with “Goldilocks,” a grizzly bear who occasionally investigated their yard. A white wolf sometimes denned across the river. For nearly 20 years, a raven family, “the Blackhearts,” were their curious neighbors. A pair of weasels would scamper over their feet and follow them around. ![]() Wildlife became accustomed to their presence and seemed to be drawn into their yard. The family brought most of their food with them but caught grayling and pike and harvested six moose over the years. Their standard required more work and strain on aging bodies, but the effort provided the satisfaction of minimizing their effect on “the community of life here, of which we became a part.” Over those years they would have to travel further and further upriver to find and cut the right trees, carry them to the river, then raft them back to Kernwood. The family decided to cut no living trees - an ethic they lived by for the next 26 years. A chartered bush plane flew them to Kernwood with everything they’d need for building “a woodcutter’s cottage out of a fairytale.” But this time, “We didn’t come to live off the land,” Jean said, “but to live with it.” They returned in the spring of 1992 for a year-and-a-half sojourn. The venture didn’t seem sensible, “But we burned our bridges and never looked back,” Irons said. “Letting go of security was like prying my fingers from a ledge,” Aspen said. They had little in the way of savings and would have to sell much of what they owned. Irons was 44 and had never lived in the wilderness Aspen was 40, soft and a bit chubby now. There were good reasons to leave the idea of living in the Bush to the realm of memory and dream. One evening, camped at a spot they would later call “Kernwood,” and they imagined returning to build a cabin. Around campfires, they talked about their dreams. In 1990, Aspen, her husband Tom Irons and their 4-year-old son Lucas paddled down Aspen’s “familiar old river,” stopping to visit her old cabin site. She told me that she chose the name Aspen, “because unlike spruce trees, aspens are always changing.” It was through her book about this experience, “Arctic Daughter: A Wilderness Journey” that I first came to know her. In 1972, Aspen took a break from college and with her boyfriend, Phil Beisel, canoed down the Yukon River and lined upriver into the Brooks Range, where they built a cabin and lived off the land for almost four years. Readers of Alaska adventure know the Helmericks through their books about their explorations in Alaska’s remote Brooks Range and along the North Coast, including Connie’s 1944 book, “We live in Alaska,” and Bud’s 1969 “The Last of the Bush Pilots.” The filmmakers were her parents, Bud and Constance Helmericks. She was also featured in the 1953 documentary “Jeanie of Alaska,” shown on national lecture tours. In another, she watches her father skin a polar bear at the family’s camp on the pack ice. One full-page photo pictured 2-year-old Aspen on snowshoes, toddling behind her mother. Her story was featured in a story in the 1953 issue of Life Magazine (”Back Home to the Arctic: A couple that fought wilderness now embrace it and settle down”). “My belonging to wild places and the urge to explore my dreams was a legacy from my parents,” Aspen said in a recent interview. ![]() It begins with Aspen’s early childhood in the wilderness. Because of the way they lived and how they left, this story is unlike any other. Their story is one of the many family tales about leaving civilization to build a cabin and live in the Alaska Bush. This week, 360 North will screen “Rewilding Kernwood,” the concluding documentary in a trilogy by Jean Aspen and Tom Irons. Jean Aspen and Tom Irons' family cabin, "Kernwood" (Photo courtesy of Jean Aspen and Tom Irons) ![]()
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