'Arctic Son' documentary to air Wednesday

PALMER — Imagine packing for a trip deep into the Brooks Range where geographic features have no name; you’ll be gone for a year or so.

It was 1992 when the floatplane pilot dropped off the last load of passengers and their gear. They had no satellite phone and no return flight scheduled to extract them from the Arctic wilderness.

The plan was for Jeanie Aspen, 42, Tom Irons, 46, their 6-year-old son, Luke, and Laurie Ann Schacht, 28, to fly in with dry food supplies and tools to help them live a full season in the Arctic.

Aspen gets her wilderness wanderlust from her parents, Arctic adventurers Constance and Bud Helmericks who spent 12 years living off the land and making documentaries.

“I was born as a prop,” Aspen says.

One of her first memories is standing in the spotlight on a stage in front of 7,000 people, she says. All eyes are on her while behind her a giant version of herself waddles across the movie screen bundled in a snowsuit.

“I’m Jeanie from Alaska,” she tells the enthralled crowd.

But “Arctic Son” is about Aspen and Irons’ son, Luke. He was 14 months old the first time his parents took him into the wilderness. They spent a summer at a lake in the Brooks Range with his grandfather and grandmother. The family returned to the wilderness when he was 6, and again when Luke was 13, both times spending full-year cycles living in a remote cabin they built with their hands and a few rudimentary tools.

Fulfilling the dream

Aspen and Irons were living in Tucson when the wilderness bug bit after a six-week canoe trip on the Koyukuk River in 1990.

For the next two years they wrote letters and made phone calls pitching the idea of filming a documentary about their return to the wilderness. But no one was interested, Irons said.

It was Dec. 26, 1991, when they decided to sell what they could of their belongings and commit to this idea of a yearlong adventure living in the Brooks Range.

After months of planning, Irons drove their truck towing 5,000 pounds of supplies from Tucson to Anchorage. The other three arrived by plane.

In Fairbanks they picked up the last of the supplies, including a dog named Shylo, and chartered a plane to carry them and their cargo deep into the mountains.

Among their gear was video equipment Iron’s brother loaned them money to buy. The four ended their 14 months in the wilderness with 99 hours of footage that was released in 2012 as a documentary called “Arctic Son: Fulfilling the Dream.”

“It ultimately took us 20 years of making money and gathering the equipment to make the documentary ourselves,” Aspen said by phone from their home in Homer last week. “We filmed it, produced it and only this last year have we given a large distributor permission to distribute it.”

At times, buzzing mosquitoes provide a soundtrack for the film. More often, the soundtrack is a suite of music composed for the film by Lindianne Sarno.

“What are we doing here in the middle of nowhere,” Aspen wonders to the camera. “I hope it gets better when dad comes.”

The book and the movie “Arctic Son” tell the story of Aspen’s return to the wilderness to share her love for living close to the land that she loves with her husband and young son.

As a 22-year-old, she and her first husband had adventured into the wilderness and lived for four years with scant tools and supplies. Aspen wrote a book about that experience, too, called “Arctic Daughter: A Wilderness Journey.”

Here calling to us

The Homer couple will be in the Valley Monday to promote the new release of their book and movie.

The book and companion documentary tell the story of their 14-month adventure living in the wilderness in 1992-93.

A floatplane pilot delivered them near the spot where they planned to build their cabin. They’d come across the location along Luke’s Creek during a canoe trip in 1990 and returned to build a cabin, winter over and float the 600 miles down the Yukon River when the ice when out in the summer.

“We have too much of ourselves invested in this home to leave it forever,” Irons tells his son as they prepare to pack out in the documentary from 1992. “It will be here calling to us.”

Aspen said she and Irons return to the cabin most summers, but this year they may have the pleasure of Schacht’s company, too. She’s returned several times since she helped build the secluded cabin.

Total, Aspen estimates she’s spent about a third of her 64 years in the wilderness.

“I’ve mastered that space. It’s not about surviving. It’s about learning from the planet,” she said. “God is all there is. If you listen, God speaks everywhere out here.”

Irons said editing nearly 100 hours of footage down to a 117-minute feature was a tremendous challenge. He said the goal through the editing process was to maintain an honest portrayal of their experiences.

“If it was in the movie it was an honest portrayal of what we did and what was going on,” Irons said. “We worked extremely hard at being honest and authentic.”

Still, editing is the process of deciding what to leave out, such as the part where Irons had walking pneumonia for eights months during the trip.

“You have to pick and choose when you are making something like that,” he said.

Aspen said the updated reprint of her 1995 book and a 46-minute special features DVD share more of their experience and catch readers up on the highlights of their lives during the past 20 years. Sadly, that includes telling fans that Lucas died in his sleep in 2012. He was 25.

For more information, visit jeanaspen.com.

Contact Heather A. Resz at 352-2268 or heather.resz@frontiersman.com.

• Meet Tom Irons and Jean Aspen — the filmmakers and authors of “Arctic Son: Fulfilling the Dream” — at 4 p.m., Monday at Fireside Books in Palmer.

• Or, meet Aspen and Irons and see their film in Anchorage at 7 p.m., Tuesday at the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center.

• Their film “Arctic Son” also is set to air on 360 North at 8 p.m., Wednesday, and at 7 p.m. May 4.