Shopping for Porcupine: A Life in Arctic Alaska

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Overview

Beginning with his parents' migration to the Alaskan wilderness and extending to his own attempts to balance hunting with writing, Shopping for Porcupine returns to the setting of Seth Kanter's debut novel Ordinary Wolves with an account of life on North America's last frontier. He recalls his early and longstanding respect for the old Inupiaq ways, cold nights on caribou hides, swimming in the ice floes for wounded waterfowl, home-schooling, and fur-clad travellers stopping with their dog teams for visits.
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Overview

Beginning with his parents' migration to the Alaskan wilderness and extending to his own attempts to balance hunting with writing, Shopping for Porcupine returns to the setting of Seth Kanter's debut novel Ordinary Wolves with an account of life on North America's last frontier. He recalls his early and longstanding respect for the old Inupiaq ways, cold nights on caribou hides, swimming in the ice floes for wounded waterfowl, home-schooling, and fur-clad travellers stopping with their dog teams for visits.

Editorial Reviews

Kirkus Reviews
Inspiring stories of an upbringing in the frosty wilderness. Employing a pleasant, conversational tone, novelist and outdoor photographer Kantner (Ordinary Wolves, 2004) fondly relates his life in Alaska. His prideful father Howard, an intrepid wanderer, scaled Mount McKinley in the early 1960s. Howard had previously learned the ancient ways of the indigenous I-upiaq people, which he and wife Erna then translated into the upbringing of Seth and his brother Kole. Kantner testifies to the immense challenges of day-to-day survival in a homemade sod igloo, a structure that was regularly buried by sudden snow squalls, in a climate where "frostbite was a way of life." The Kantner family subsisted on animals like porcupine and caribou in its entirety: "pot roast, tongue, tenderloins, lips and leg bones, rendered back and intestine fat." They wore mukluks and wrapped themselves in hides to stay warm as they drank melted snow and welcomed stray visitors to their free-range "bush life." Throughout their youth, Seth and Kole experienced "low stone walls of racism" from nearby Eskimo villagers because of their white skin. As they matured into young men, the brothers hunted, ice-fished and trapped otter together, though the gap between their personal interests eventually pried them apart. Kole went on to study physics; Seth romanced his wife-to-be in their igloo, quit college, then later gravitated to the exacting art of nature photographs, many of which fill this book with breathtaking splendor. Later chapters find the author and spouse Stacey enjoying adventures on the Alaskan tundra, including varied moose dramas and driving daughter China to kindergarten in 30-degree-below-zero weather. Now in hislate 40s, the author advocates for the preservation of the Alaskan tundra, increasingly gentrified by big-fisted politics and "heaped and flippant wealth."A majestic, frozen backdrop beautifully thawed by human life.

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781571313010
  • Publisher: Milkweed Editions
  • Publication date: 6/28/2008
  • Pages: 256
  • Sales rank: 893,725
  • Product dimensions: 6.70 (w) x 8.60 (h) x 0.80 (d)

Table of Contents

Glossary

The Candy Store 2

Non-dairy Creamer 9

Counting Fish 46

Brothers on the Trapline 60

Inupiaq Mailman 70

Walking from Barrow 82

Shopping for Porcupine 97

Sharpshooter 102

Good-bye Our Season 120

Flower of the Fringe 126

Darkness 141

Hanging with the Hang-Out Kings 143

Once Upon a Frontier 157

Bob and Carrie Come Out of the Hills 172

Conversations with China 178

City Boy 184

Salting a Moose 186

These Happy Spruce 196

Silver Strangers 208

The Whiteboy Award 216

Watching for Mammoth 226

Acknowledgments 239

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Sort by: Showing all of 4 Customer Reviews

  • Anonymous

    Posted July 22, 2008

    Shopping for Porcupines

    I loved this book! I enjoyed Ordinary Wolves, so I waited very anxiously for Mr. Kantner¿s next book. It was well worth the wait! The first thing I did was go through all of the pictures in the book. So THIS was the Alaska Mr, Kantner writes about! Far from the tour buses and sight seeing trains. The pictures themselves told a wonderful story! The written stories were perfect ¿ done in a way that not only entertained me, but made me feel the Alaska Mr. Kantner describes. I felt the cold, I heard the wind and could feel the hide of a bear. I laughed, I cried, I cringed, and at times even envied experiences of a life spent in Alaska¿s Wilderness. The Alaska Mr. Kantner writes about is a world fast slipping away ¿ native ways, unmarred land, plentiful animals. I am so grateful that he wrote about a lifestyle ¿ a world ¿ that I would never have had the chance to experience, had it not been for this book. I plan to buy more copies for gifts and would recommend this book to anyone!

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted July 22, 2008

    The real deal

    Seth Kantner's book, Shopping For Porcupine, is a viscerally real collection of portraits and recollections of life on northwestern Alaska's Kobuk River, from the late 1950's through to the present day. Kantner's folks were 'outsiders' when they settled on the Kobuk, to be followed by many more. Most have moved on, but Seth - who was born in his family's sod iglu - has remained for over 40 years. His dad's connection to the land, the Inuit culture and unfettered subsistance lifestyle rubbed off on Seth, and he has carried on those traditions while coping with the inescapable intrusions of modern Western life. I especially appreciated the honest and literally wrenching descriptions of the changes in the land, the people, the culture and the climate, that over time serve to remind us of the impermanence of anything in this world. Yet Kantner shows us that not all change is beyond our power to control or at least influence -- although simply living by example is not always enough, and speaking up can be a little like banging a pot to scare a bear away: now he knows where you are. Clearly the conundrum is to decide what change to accept gracefully and what to challenge, vocally and adamantly. Wilderness living is not for everyone, and can be almost unfathomable if you haven't done it. Hudson Stuck once said, of wilderness travel by dog team, that the greatest gift one man could give another was a trail. With his writing, Seth Kanter breaks trail through the heart of the last half-century of life in northwestern Alaska as only someone who lives the life could do. Those who find it and follow will be infinitely richer for the journey.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted July 12, 2008

    Northern Reality

    Once again, Seth Kantner has not only shown himself to be a brilliant and honest writer but also very much in touch with the country he has lived in and on since birth. Unlike his previous book, Ordinary Wolves, a novel, this non-fiction work deals more openly with the country and its people than with introspection and is much brighter in perspective. It is a is not only a delight, it tells us about a place few know and understand as well as Mr. Kantner. Many, too many, visit briefly and write profusely. As a professor I was often asked to recommend books to read by people heading into the north, to prepare them. Until Mr. Kantner began his writing there was nothing to recommend, nothing that did more than confuse the issues and misrepresent the country and its people. That is no longer the case. I can strongly recommend this book to anyone heading into the North, to anyone just dreaming to do so and especially to those who may never make the trip. This is real stuff by a real Alaskan.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted June 15, 2008

    A reviewer

    I've read many books about Alaska, this is the best, period. The reading becomes an experience beyond mere words. Passages will be re-read to try through Kanner's expeience to absorb the deep love he has for the people and the country. At the same time his sadness for what has already and continues to be lost sounds the alarm as have few others.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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