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Authentic Alaska

Maggie Shipstead

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Inspired by Alaska Maggie Shipstead’s novel Great Circle follows the life of Marian Graves, a female pilot who disappears near Antarctica in 1950 while attempting to circumnavigate the earth north to south. While the book is packed with shipwrecks, plane crashes, bootlegging mobsters, Hollywood scandals, and forbidden romance, a sizeable part of the story takes place in the glaciers, frontier towns, and wilderness of Alaska. The 600-page book—spanning three generations and nearly 100 years of history—took Shipstead more than six years to create, and was a finalist for the 2021 Booker Prize. In this interview, Shipstead describes how Alaska helped inspire her story of a woman breaking barriers, both personal and universal. —AS TOLD TO AND EDITED BY MOLLY RETTIG Your protagonist, Marian, had a pretty crazy childhood. She survived a shipwreck as a newborn in which her father, the captain, rescued Marian and her twin brother in a lifeboat.…

My View North
30-Second Reads

Wilderness for All

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Appreciating Alaska’s parks and other public lands I live in Alaska because I was born and raised here, and it will always feel like home. But I stay in Alaska because it’s the only place on the planet with so much dramatic and varied wilderness. Alaska’s national and state parks alone total nearly 60 million acres. Some of that is right out my back door. Getting away from it all to play on public lands is as easy as hopping in my car and driving 30 minutes to a trailhead. Add a bit longer drive plus an air charter or water taxi, and I could be dropped off in the middle of nowhere to enjoy only my own company for days or weeks on end.  Once out there, though, I wouldn’t really be alone, as so many wild creatures roam the land and water: grizzlies in Denali National Park and…

A day alone with the river Nick Jans
Authentic Alaska

A Day Alone With the River

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Absolute Perfection The jet skiff skimmed up the Ambler River, my guilt fading with each bend. I’d sworn to myself to stay glued to home, attending to a pile of now-or-next-year chores. But here I was, heading out into the country instead. The day had started with the same grungy, rain-spattered weather that had defined the past month; but by afternoon the clouds had dissolved into a blue sprawl of sky, colors glowing, the breeze sighing of summer—the best day of the whole damn fall. As a bonus, the hordes of mosquitoes and gnats that had plagued us had evaporated. So, what to do—spend this afternoon patching and painting a storage shed desperate for it five years ago, or take a river run somewhere? Not much of a decision. The shed was good at waiting, after all.  Soon as I’d decided to duck out, I knew where I was going—up…

The Handcrafted Life of Dick Proenneke
30-Second Reads

Tools to Live By

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New book details iconic Alaskan The Handcrafted Life of Dick Proenneke (written by Monroe Robinson and published by Lost Art Press, 2021) is a lavish book that should be subtitled: “The Bible of Wilderness Cabin Craft,” a must-reference for every rural and wilderness dweller or dreamer. Dick Proenneke’s life and legacy, documented in his book, One Man’s Wilderness, and subsequent documentaries, is a vivid testament to the wilderness lifestyle. For 19 summers, Monroe Robinson and his wife, Kay, acted as caretakers for Proenneke’s Twin Lakes cabin. They studied, recorded, and documented the construction and tools Proenneke used in building his cabin, cache, furniture, and implements. Dick Proenneke in the Dutch door he built in 1968. Robinson came to Alaska in 1968 and soon established himself as a log craftsman and cabinet maker of the highest order, building for former Gov. Jay Hammond and others. Robinson met Proenneke in 1982 unaware…

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