The Last Light Breaking: Living Among Alaska's Inupiat

by Nick Jans

Overview

From his home in remote Eskimo Village, Nick Jans leads us into a vast, magical world: Alaska's Brooks Range. Drawn from fourteen years of arctic experience, The Last Light Breaking offers a rare perspective on America's last great wilderness and its people—the Inupiat Natives, an ancient culture on the cusp of change.

Making a poignant connection between the world he describes and the world of the Inupiat once knew, Nick Jans invokes with stunning power the life of the Eskimos in the harsh arctic and the mystical aura of the wilderness of the far North. With the eye of an outdoorsman and the heart of a poet, Jans weaves together these 23 essays with strands of Native American narrative, making vivid a place where wolves and grizzlies still roam free, hunters follow the caribou, and old women cast their nets in the dust as they have for countless generations. But looming on the horizon is the world of roads and modern technology; the future has already arrived in the form of stop signs, computers, and satellite dishes. Jans creates unforgettable images of a proud people facing an uncertain future, and of his own journey through this haunting timeless landscape.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780882404585
Publisher:	TURNER PUB CO
Publication date:	08/01/2007
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.92(w) x 9.01(h) x 0.60(d)
Lexile:	1030L (what's this?)

About the Author

Nick Jans is one of Alaska’s most recognized and prolific writers. A contributing editor to Alaska Magazine and a member of USA Today’s board of editorial contributors, he’s written several books, including A Place Beyond, and hundreds of magazine articles, and contributed to many anthologies. His range includes poetry, short fiction, literary essays, natural history, outdoor adventure, fishing, and political commentary. He has been the recipient of numerous writing awards including a Rasmuson Foundation artist grant. He currently lives in Juneau with his wife, Sherrie, and travels widely in Alaska. He returns each year to Ambler, the arctic Inupiaq Eskimo village in which he lived for 20 years, and the place he still calls “home.”

Read an Excerpt

Willard Outwater leans into his binoculars, pointing across the Kobuk River toward a distant shimmer of movement. Everyone turns, suddenly attentive.

“Bulls?” asks Clarence Wood, shading his eyes. Willard relaxes and smiles. “Just small ones,” he says.  We lean back; there’s a fresh pot of coffee, a crystalline August afternoon, and no hurry. Soon it will be time to eat. The aroma of caribou soup and roasting ribs wafts through camp.

Table of Contents

Preface – 9, Acknowledgements – 11, Map – 12, Getting There – 17, Ambler Trading – 21, Black River Autumn – 33, Two Worlds, One Spirit – 41, My Last Grizzly – 53, Arctic Heroes – 65, The River of Their Passing – 83, Beat the Qaaviks – 91, Running with the Wolves – 101, A Place Beyond – 109, What They Leave Behind – 115, Sheefish Time – 125, The Old Man’s Winter – 131, A Trip to the Store – 141, Housekeeping in the Northwest Arctic – 147, The Circle of the Kill – 161, A Good Thing – 165, Fire at Us! – 173, Traveling Like Clarence – 177, Sharing the Weight – 189, An Amulet of the Spirit – 197, A Place Called Red Dog – 201, The Last Light Breaking – 209, Epigraph Sources – 215, Suggested Reading - 218

Editorial Reviews

A fresh wonderful new voice, all the more alive against the grave and ancient background of Inupiat tradition, wildlife, and the waiting landscape.  I much admire The Last Light Breaking.”

        — Peter Matthiessen, author of  The Snow Leopard and At Play in the Fields of the Lord

From the Publisher