PORT ANGELES — He was born in a sod igloo 50 years ago and has lived many a long day and night in remote reaches of Alaska.
But Seth Kantner’s sense of wonder is still big in him.
“Just before midnight,” he writes, “the sun drops low enough in the north to spread golden light across the tundra.
“The smell of melting-out soil and last autumn’s leaves, cottonwood buds and pussy willow pollen is almost honey-sweet in the air. The night is calm and still, and at the same time ringing with song, a million avian tourists just arrived — sparrows and thrushes and warblers, all busy and excited and singing about it.”
This is summertime in the Arctic, and Kantner whisks us there with Swallowed by the Great Land, the short-essay collection he’ll read from this evening.
He’s coming for a Port Book and News-sponsored event, this time at the Great Hall of the Elwha Klallam Heritage Center, 401 E. First St., at 7 p.m.
Admission is free, while Kantner will have his books, which include Shopping for Porcupine and Ordinary Wolves, available for purchase and signing.
Fisher, photographer
In addition to his writing, Kantner is a commercial fisherman and wildlife photographer who lives near Kotzebue, Alaska, a town of a few thousand between Nome and Kobuk Valley National Park.
Schooled at home and on the land — among the caribou, wolves and bears — he is the son of Howard and Erna Kantner, who were not miners nor homesteaders but “people who admired the old Inupiaq [Alaska native] way of life.”
When he lived in Missoula, Mont., to attend the university there, Kantner found Montana was “really tame, and not wild,” like his home.
“I missed the Arctic too much. I’m still addicted to it,” he said in an interview from his Seattle hotel room.
Kantner has chosen to stay in wild Alaska; he and his wife Stacey raised their daughter China, there, teaching her how to hunt caribou and geese, gather overwintered cranberries for pie and identify a grizzly’s scratch on a tree trunk.
On tour
Yet he’s also a modern writer who must go on book tour. Kantner took the Alaska state ferry from Haines to Bellingham, then did readings in Seattle and Portland before coming out to the North Olympic Peninsula.
He was here a half-dozen years ago to read from Shopping for Porcupine, and said he’s back because Alan and Cindy Turner, the owners of Port Book and News, have been steadfast supporters.
Forhcoming works
This time out, Kantner will read not only from Swallowed by the Great Land but also from two forthcoming works: A Thousand Trails Home, a book of photography and text about the great herds of caribou walking through decades of climate and cultural changes; and Wolverine School, a young-adult novel set in Alaska and Florida.
Kantner will show select photos on the big screen, including one with tens of thousands of the animals in one frame.
Swallowed by the Great Land, subtitled “And Other Dispatches from Alaska’s Frontier,” reflects his double life: a long way from the cities but connected via the Internet and the smartphone.
In Kotzebue, “my iPhone scatters the hell out of my poor little brain,” so it’s not easy focusing on the writing. But get away to the sod igloo, and it’s hard there too. Kantner’s too busy chopping wood for heat or hauling moss for insulation.
“The comical thing,” he said, “is you’ll run into an Eskimo, you notice he has a nice knife, and he’ll say, ‘I got it on Amazon.com.’”
Swallowed by the Great Land, published by Mountaineers Books, is found on Amazon too, and at local bookstores.
Port Book and News, it turns out, will present two more outdoorsy books and authors over the next few weeks: Geoscientist and storyteller Dave Tucker will read from his new work, Geology Underfoot in Western Washington, on Friday, Oct. 16, and journalist Greg Johnston will discuss his guidebook Washington’s Pacific Coast on Friday, Nov. 13.
Both events will start at 7 p.m. in the Raymond Carver Room at the Port Angeles Library, 2210 S. Peabody St.
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
