James Campbell
Aidan Campbell in front of her home away from home.
Not to take anything away from Jim Campbell’s considerable talents as a teller of tales, but, hot damn, what luck he’s got!
The Lodi-based writer just happens to have a cousin, Heimo Korth, who left Appleton decades ago for a hardscrabble life hunting and trapping and raising three daughters in the remote Alaskan wilderness, 250 miles from the nearest road. Korth was the subject of Campbell’s bracing 2004 book, The Final Frontiersman.
Then the guy manages to raise a daughter, Aidan, who is equally worthy of a book-length tribute. That’s what he delivers in Braving It: A Father, a Daughter, and an Unforgettable Journey into the Alaskan Wild. It’s as much about parenting as it is about adventure, though in Campbell’s book the two concepts are often inseparable.
Aidan, when we meet her, is a plucky 15-year-old with the courage to face her deepest fears and the smarts to warm her hands in the intestines of a caribou she’s helping butcher on a day when it’s 35 degrees below zero, not counting the wind chill.
Yup, Campbell takes Aidan to hang with Heimo and his wife, Edna, in the Arctic bush, in the dead of winter. It’s actually just one of three Alaskan adventures they share, in order of increasing difficulty.
Elizabeth Campbell
Author James Campbell seeks an indelible bond with his daughter.
First, the father-daughter team travels to Heimo’s neck of the woods in the summer, to help him build a new cabin, an activity most teenage girls would probably rank below banging their heads against a wall in terms of desirability. Even Edna took a powder on that. Aidan is in charge of stripping bark from logs, a task that’s every bit as arduous as it sounds.
Then Jim and Aidan return in late November and December for three and a half weeks of Arctic living, sleeping in a tent heated by a wood stove that goes out several times a night. Finally, they return the following July, when Aidan is all of 16, to spend four weeks traversing a mountain range and canoeing 110 miles down a perilous river.
Why do people do such things? Campbell has a bead on his own motivation: “I want an indelible bond with my daughter. I want her to remember this trip for the rest of her life. I want her to remember me after I’m gone. I want Awe. I want to feel alive. I want Aidan to be filled with life and wonder.”
Campbell is an engaging writer with an essayist’s flair and a sportswriter’s precision. He honestly relates moments when, like most parents, he falls short of perfection. Some readers — my mom among them — would flip their lids at the dangers he exposes his daughter to. But Aidan appreciates the opportunity, and proves herself worthy of his trust.
“Dad?” she asks him at one point. “How do you really live each day?”
Now she knows.
