The Final Frontiersman.

The Final Frontiersman

James Campbell, Atria Books

1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

0743453131, $25.00, 300 pp.

Heimo Korth is a young man whose heart has always been in the wilderness. He longs for that life while experiencing a type of it as he spends much of his free time enjoying the woods near his home in Appleton, Wisconsin. An unhappy home life with a demanding and insensitive father gives him the wanderlust for Alaska. He is among many young men who venture into the northern frontiers for the adventure in the 70s. What makes him different is that he is only one of the very few who manages to make a living there, a rather meager one but a living nonetheless. He builds a cabin in the bush, in fact he builds a few. He traps for fur and hunts for food.

The story is respectfully and lovingly told by Heimo's cousin, James Campbell. James visits Heimo often and spends weeks at a time living at Heimo's place. He shares with the reader what it is like for him to live in the bush and anecdotally for Heimo and his family. Edna, an Eskimo woman and Heimo's wife, loves the wilderness. The family does look forward to spending six weeks in town during the short summer season. They have two daughters, Rhonda and Krin, who were raised on the frontier and know no other kind of life.

On December 2, 1980, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) was signed into law. That changed everything for Heimo and others like him. "They granted renewable five-year permits to anyone who built his cabin before 1978".(p191) That meant that Heimo and his family could continue living in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge until the death of the last immediate family member. Hence the title, The Last Frontiersman.

The girls are home schooled but Rhonda wants to go to High School in Appleton. Her adventures there are complicated by her unusual Eskimo appearance. While she is an out-going and happy girl, she has to deal with racism and new surroundings of her uncle's home and family. He and his wife have problems controlling her activities and Heimo returns to bring her back to Alaska. Heimo and Edna reluctantly decide to leave the bush and go to live in Fairbanks in order to meet the needs of Rhonda and Krin as they go into their teens increasingly hungry for the company of children their own age. Heimo plans to go back to do some trapping occasionally but he and Edna realize that part of their lives is over.

Anyone interested in a wilderness existence will enjoy this book. The long cold winter, no electricity, water retrieved from the river in large buckets once or twice a day. Food consisted of caught animals and any basic stores they were able to afford on their infrequent trips to town. Meals were cooked outdoors in the Arctic summer, on a wood burning stove in the winter. Always the danger of a roaming grizzly while outdoors. The only way in or out of their part of the country is by air in small bush planes. The first cabin Heimo's family occupied was ten by twelve feet. Later he built one a little larger. The last frontiersman will be gone from the state of Alaska permanently in a few years. This book tells us what it was like.