Jean Aspen

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