\u201cAn arctic pirate looks at sixty.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s how Nick Jans describes his newest book, a moving collection of essays called \u201cThe Giant\u2019s Hand: A Life in Arctic Alaska.\u201d That description encapsulates some of the book\u2019s main themes: adventure, friendship, home and the passage of time.<\/p>\n
In \u201cThe Giant\u2019s Hand,\u201d Minnie Aliitchak Gray, the Ambler woman who would come to be Jans\u2019 \u201cEskimo mom,\u201d heals him of a mysterious ailment she diagnoses as a twisted intestine, using nothing but her hands and her knowledge. Jans wanders the Arctic in his first long adventure, and innumerable more. He builds a house. And years later, he begins a long process of goodbyes \u2014 to friends, to youth, to life as a full-time Arctic resident \u2014 and he undergoes the reckoning that comes that.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t come to Alaska to become a writer. I came to Alaska to live, and I came to the bush to live. I started writing as a way to explain things to myself, things that I didn\u2019t understand. If photography became my journal, writing became my therapy,\u201d Jans said. \u201cIn the Arctic, (complexities) are stripped down to their essences. That just makes them all the more dynamic and powerful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Each essay in \u201cThe Giant\u2019s Hand\u201d appeared in Alaska Magazine over the last 25 years. Jans has been writing for the magazine since 1990.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love the essay form. It\u2019s absolutely my wheelhouse,\u201d he said. \u201cPersonal essay combines the intensity of poetry, the shape of short fiction and the undeniable advantage of being true.\u201d<\/p>\n
[Read one of the essays \u2014 Caribou Time \u2014 here<\/a>]<\/p>\n In \u201cGoing Alone,\u201d Jans delves into the way one becomes a part of the world when away from the \u201ccommotion\u201d people make together.<\/p>\n \u201cI remember almost everything,\u201d he wrote of one trip. \u201cI was alone, in the fullest sense of the word\u2026 Yet my life over that brief time, rather than empty, was filled with a complete sense of where I was, where I was going, what I was doing, and why \u2014 rich enough, it seems from this distance, to justify my time on earth\u2026 what\u2019s not often recognized is the huge difference between heading out (into the wilderness) with others and going alone. The experiences are so different that you can scarcely equate them.\u201d<\/p>\n The book pays homage to Jans\u2019 friends, Arctic family, and traveling companions. Of Minnie Gray, to whom Jans dedicates the book, he writes \u201cI still remember meeting Minnie, soon after I arrived. She walked into the store, saw a stranger behind the counter, and introduced herself \u2014 a rare thing in a place where everyone knew each other, and expected that you did, too\u2026 My world became a little less lonely.\u201d<\/p>\n Jans self-published this book, and though it\u2019s a lot of work, he\u2019s enjoying the creative control self-publishing gives him, he said. Though it\u2019s a collection of stories, not a single long-form narrative, \u201cIt does have a beginning, middle, end and very careful, sometimes subtle thematic connections,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s all a combination of setting out into the world, finding a home, getting lessons from the land and the people you meet, and coming to grips with inevitable change and mortality, including your own.\u201d<\/p>\n That reckoning with mortality and with aging gives \u201cThe Giant\u2019s Hand\u201d a sometimes melancholic feel. In a way, it\u2019s a love letter to the community of Ambler, the Arctic, the wild, and the people Jans came to know and love after moving there at 24.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m certainly not just writing about the Arctic. I\u2019m writing about life,\u201d he said. \u201cAs Clint Eastwood says, \u2018We all have it coming.\u2019 If you live your life well, you love things. Loving has losing built into it. If you let your loss or your own oncoming demise ruin everything for you, then you\u2019re missing the point.\u201d<\/p>\n [Author Nick Jans discusses writing, life in Alaska<\/a>]<\/p>\n This summer, Jans has been making presentations on cruise ships.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s an incredible opportunity to advocate for wild Alaska, and wolves in particular,\u201d he said. He tries to get the audience \u201cengaged in the whole idea that if Alaska is going stay wild in the largest sense of the word, a lot of it\u2019s going to be up to them\u2026. The only reason places stay wild is because people willed it so.\u201d<\/p>\n Jans\u2019 next book is a collaboration with Juneau photographer Mark Kelley on the Mendenhall Glacier; he said he\u2019ll likely publish a collection of animal essays in 2018. And the novel he\u2019s been working on for years, \u201ca classic tragedy in the Greek or Shakespearian sense, but in a remote Inupiaq Eskimo village in the 1980s,\u201d is ongoing. The novel will likely be his \u201cfarewell album,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very gritty, very visual, and very, very fast-paced, he said. \u201cThree characters are driven by their essential nature to their own destruction or the destruction of what they love most. It\u2019s about the nature of interracial justice, and from whence it comes.\u201d<\/p>\n He\u2019s also working on the final phases of the Romeo exhibit at the Mendenhall Glacier; it should be finished this fall, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Giant\u2019s Hand\u201d and Jans\u2019 other books are available on his website, nickjans.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n —<\/em><\/p>\n Related stories:<\/p>\n Rainy Day Reads: Sci-fi for the soul<\/a><\/p>\n