Braving It: A Father, a Daughter, and an Unforgettable Journey into the Alaskan Wild

Braving It: A Father, a Daughter, and an Unforgettable Journey into the Alaskan Wild

by James Campbell
Braving It: A Father, a Daughter, and an Unforgettable Journey into the Alaskan Wild

Braving It: A Father, a Daughter, and an Unforgettable Journey into the Alaskan Wild

by James Campbell

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Overview

The powerful and affirming story of a father's journey with his teenage daughter to the far reaches of Alaska
 
Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, home to only a handful of people, is a harsh and lonely place. So when James Campbell’s cousin Heimo Korth asked him to spend a summer building a cabin in the rugged Interior, Campbell hesitated about inviting his fifteen-year-old daughter, Aidan, to join him: Would she be able to withstand clouds of mosquitoes, the threat of grizzlies, bathing in an ice-cold river, and hours of grueling labor peeling and hauling logs?

But once there, Aidan embraced the wild. She even agreed to return a few months later to help the Korths work their traplines and hunt for caribou and moose. Despite windchills of 50 degrees below zero, father and daughter ventured out daily to track, hunt, and trap. Under the supervision of Edna, Heimo’s Yupik Eskimo wife, Aidan grew more confident in the woods.

Campbell knew that in traditional Eskimo cultures, some daughters earned a rite of passage usually reserved for young men. So he decided to take Aidan back to Alaska one final time before she left home. It would be their third and most ambitious trip, backpacking over Alaska’s Brooks Range to the headwaters of the mighty Hulahula River, where they would assemble a folding canoe and paddle to the Arctic Ocean. The journey would test them, and their relationship, in one of the planet’s most remote places: a land of wolves, musk oxen, Dall sheep, golden eagles, and polar bears.

At turns poignant and humorous, Braving It is an ode to America’s disappearing wilderness and a profound meditation on what it means for a child to grow up—and a parent to finally, fully let go.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780307461254
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Publication date: 05/09/2017
Pages: 400
Sales rank: 254,948
Product dimensions: 5.10(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

JAMES CAMPBELL is the author of The Final Frontiersman and The Ghost Mountain Boys. He has written for Outside magazine, National Geographic Adventure, Men’s Journal, Audubon, and many other publications.

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Prologue 
(Continues…)



Excerpted from "Braving It"
by .
Copyright © 2017 James Campbell.
Excerpted by permission of Crown/Archetype.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents

Maps x

Prologue xiii

Part I

1 Into the Wild 3

2 Bugs, Bears, and the Bathroom Procedure 11

3 Peeling Poles with Marcus Mumford 22

4 First the River Giveth 33

5 Downriver 47

6 New Rituals and the Ridgepole 62

7 Cloudberries 75

8 When the Mountain Is Out 81

Part II

9 Fernweh 93

10 The, Pull 105

12 Back to the Bush 113

12 The Real World 125

13 Wolverine and Whale 137

14 Thanksgiving 154

15 The Life They Love 167

16 Wilderness Girl 180

17 Birthdays and Beaver Tail 195

Part III

18 It's in the Genes 207

19 Trust 220

20 Say Good-Bye to Summer 232

21 "It's A!?" 237

22 Be Still My Heart 249

23 Mr. Griz 259

24 Where the Wolves Sing 275

25 At the Headwaters 283

26 A Bony River Indeed 291

27 Paddle and Pray 307

28 Grit and the Gorge 316

29 Hypothermia 324

30 The Way Distance Goes 335

31 Good-Bye, Alaska 344

Acknowledgments 356

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