Farewell Putyuk

WE BETTER GET GOING,” ALVIN WILLIAMS SAID “Daylight’s burning.” A dozen of us stood with shovels and axes on a snow-covered knoll on the  south side of the Kobuk River, five miles below the Inupiaq village of Ambler.  Weathered wooden crosses rose through the drifts; before us, a rectangle of cleared ground. My companions had known Clarence Wood all their lives. I, the oldest and sole naluagmiu—white man—had known him four decades, as my traveling partner and friend. Most of…

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Halfway House

So here Sherrie, dogs, and I are, on the summer solstice, the one-month anniversary of moving to Haines—more precisely, to a gravel lane off Chilkat Lake road, just after mile 26 on the Haines Highway, about 10 miles shy of the Canadian border. Our five-acre homestead perches on a knoll a half mile off the Klaheni River—a post-and-beam horse barn with a small but pleasant cabin-like apartment upstairs, and a 450-square-foot yurt (a semi-permanent, wood-framed, circular tent) 200 yards down…

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A Wolf Called Romeo

At last, after seven years of living the story of Romeo the wolf, and another three years of writing and interviews and research and review and seemingly endless edits and re-writes and revisions, A Wolf Called Romeo is complete, and being shipped to bookstores across the country. The first-print hardcover edition, which I held in my hands for the first time a couple of weeks ago, looks gorgeous. I know you’d expect me to say so, but really, I’ve seldom…

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Horsing Around

It’s about a month ago, at my pal Vic Walker’s house in Juneau, celebrating a return to Alaska, reuniting with good friends, a new book coming out, and whatever else comes along. At the moment captured in the photo, taken by Vic, my wife Sherrie is receiving yet another object lesson reminding her what she married. At least it’s the other end of the horse—this time, anyhow. In the background, looking somewhat and understandably perplexed, Vic’s gorgeous daughter Evie, a…

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Nick Jans
HC 60 Box 2628
Haines, AK 99827

njans@gci.net

Testimonials
“The compelling, grounded account of a black wolf that stepped forward in the half-light between wilderness and civilization and the people who met him there. From the powerful first moments to a hard-won conclusion that becomes our journey, too, A Wolf Called Romeo is a book that carries long after the last page is turned.”
Susannah CharlesonAuthor of Scent of the Missing and The Possibility Dogs
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