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Title details for Braving It by James Campbell - Available

Braving It

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

by James Campbell
ebook
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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.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    May 10, 2016

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780307461261
      • File size: 17530 KB

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9780307461261
      • File size: 17530 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      April 1, 2016
      A father and daughter's adventures in Alaska. When Campbell's (The Ghost Mountain Boys: Their Epic March and the Terrifying Battle for New Guinea, 2007, etc.) daughter Aidan turned 15, it was time to fulfill a promise that he'd made before she was in kindergarten: someday, they would go to Alaska together. Originally, the father-daughter duo planned to canoe one of Alaska's majestic rivers, but when the author's cousin and his wife, "some of the last hunter-trapper-gatherers living in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge," asked for help building a log cabin in the wild, they decided to shift gears. With humor and honesty, Campbell brings readers along for the adventure, which is full of swarms of hungry mosquitoes, the fear of grizzly bears, and the push-pull relationship between a teenage girl and her father. Both of them overcame weariness, muscle aches, and their own stubborn personalities and learned to enjoy the work and to feel the wonder of their natural surroundings. All too soon, they were headed back to their hometown in rural Wisconsin. Discontent quickly settled, and before long, they were planning another trip to Alaska, this time in early winter to help the cousin on his traplines. They faced frostbite, hunger, and more hardships but shared the beauty of the Alaskan dusk and the aurora borealis. Back in Wisconsin once again, they longed for the openness of the Arctic, so they planned a third trip, this time down the Hulahula River. Once again, father and daughter had to face difficulties at every turn, including whitewater rapids, more bears, and each other, but perseverance and love overcame any obstacles. Campbell expertly blends facts on the flora, fauna, and general life in the Alaskan bush with his reflections on being middle-aged, with many adventurous years behind him, as opposed to his daughter, whose quest for adventure has only just begun. Informative, humorous, and full of a love of nature.

      COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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