Nick Jans is a contributing editor for Alaska magazine and a member of USA Today's Board of Editorial Contributors. He has written for Rolling Stone, Backpacker, and the Christian Science Monitor. His books include Tracks of the Unseen: Meditations on Alaska Wildlife, Landscape, and Photography; A Place Beyond: Finding Home in Arctic Alaska, The Last Light Breaking: Living Among Alaska's Inupiat Eskimos, and Glacier Wolf.
With the eye of an outdoorsman and the heart of a poet, Jans weaves together these 23 essays with strands of Eskimo narrative, making vivid a place where wolves and grizzlies still roam free, hunters follow the caribou, and old women cast their nets in the dusk 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. "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
In the tradition of John Krakauer's Into the Wild, a story of one man's obsession with Alaska, and his foolhardy quest to understand Alaskan brown bears and his violent death in the jaws of Alaska's brown bears. More than just a book about Timothy Treadwell, The Grizzly Maze will be a definitive look at bears, bear behavior, and our conflicted relationship with them.
Now in softcover! In A Place Beyond, Nick Jans leads us into his "found home" - the Eskimo village of Amber, Alaska, and the vast wilderness around it. In his powerful essays, the rhythms of daily arctic life blend with high adventure - camping among wolves, traveling with Inupiat hunters, witnessing the Kobuk River at breakup. The poignancy of a village funeral comes to life, hordes of mosquitoes whine against a tent, a grizzly stands etched against the snow-just a sampling of the images and events rendered in Jans's transparent, visual prose. Moments of humor are offset by haunting insights, and by thoughtful reflections on contemporary Inupiaq culture, making A Place Beyond a book to savor.
