June 15, 2021
A richly illustrated adventure with the Arctic caribou on their land, "veined with their ancient trails." Alaska native and conservationist Kantner has been among caribou all his life. His back-to-the-land father hunted the migratory creatures, and his take formed an important part of the household economy. As his narrative opens, he is out on familiar ground, "along the Kobuk River where I was born," watching vast herds move across the landscape as summer gives way to a brief fall that will soon turn cold: "everything knows that winter is coming." There is almost nothing related to caribou that the author does not cover in this wide-ranging book, which is especially good, like Barry Lopez's Arctic Dreams, in welcoming the knowledge and stories of Indigenous people. Minnie Gray, one of them, was an especially rich source of information: "She was an elder before she was old," Kantner writes, who "shared her wisdom freely, without conditions." That wisdom has been instrumental in Kantner's work preserving migratory pathways and otherwise helping conserve caribou populations in a time of drastic climate change throughout the north country. As the author makes clear, the caribou should by rights retain their role in the native economy among hunters who recognize that "the land is an endless grocery store, and everyone here has known times when mile after mile, every shelf was bare." (He even includes a recipe or two.) Kantner admits the dangers to the caribou and other Arctic species are so profound that his pen was often stilled: "Who cared anymore about caribou lives and struggles? Didn't most people consider, say, the stock market infinitely more important?" His book, featuring more than 100 full-color photos, is its own answer, and though sometimes a touch too purple, his argument makes a good case for why we should care. Readers will gain a new appreciation of these magnificent ruminants through Kantner's sharply focused eyes.
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Starred review from August 1, 2021
Kantner once again turns his lens on his home, a northwestern swath of Alaska, in this intelligent, emotional, and passionate exploration of life among the Western Arctic caribou herd. Born and raised in a sod igloo on Paungaqtaugruk, an isolated three-mile bluff along the Kobuk River, Kantner has spent his life watching, hunting, and photographing the caribou. His deep knowledge of caribou life, gleaned from not only his own experiences but also those of Native elders who were family friends, is imparted here in a seasonal review that is interwoven with the ways in which the herd shapes the region's culture, history, and politics. Along with telling his own personal story, which reads as the adventure Jack London and Jon Krakauer wished they had lived, Kantner considers how rural Alaskans rely on, revere, and, occasionally, take for granted the caribou. His sharply worded dismissals of bureaucratic ideas about life in the bush have an urgent relevancy, while his gorgeous prose, along with his stunning color photographs, bring the beauty of the state to every page. Ordinary Wolves (2004) and Shopping for Porcupine (2008) made Kantner a literary force, but this is the book he was born to write, a most worthy successor to Barry Lopez's Arctic Dreams (1986).
COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.