Nature Book Reader June 2020 - Flipbook - Page 46
A Nature Book Reader
KATE FELD
Kate Feld is a writer of short stories, creative nonfiction and journalism, living
in the pennine foothills outside Manchester.
Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
At 13, Miyax runs away
from home and like many
runaways before her, falls
in with a dangerous gang.
But she lives on the North
Slope of Alaska and her gang
is a pack of Arctic wolves –
who grudgingly adopt her,
and enable her to survive
a long winter in the wild.
All these years later I can
still remember the names
and personalities of each
individual wolf: Silver and
Amaroq, Kapu and Nails and
Jello.
Julie of the Wolves
was published in 1972 by
naturalist and author Jean
Craighead George, who
had come to believe that
wolves were ‘true gentlemen’
during her work at the
Arctic Research Laboratory
in Barrow. Beneath the
adventure story is another,
darker story, of Miyax’s
46
Iñupiaq tribe forgetting the
old ways – the very skills
that enable her to stay alive
– and falling into a more
mainstream American life
shaped by the advancing
tourist industry, amid poverty
and alcohol abuse.
That story snuck into
my consciousness around
the edges. But what I loved
about this book was its vivid
descriptions of the starkly
beautiful Arctic landscape and
the birds and animals that
live in it. And it’s true that I
didn’t find many books where
the hero was a young girl like
me. A girl hunting with her
harpoon, navigating by the
stars and surviving, against
the odds, in a deadly place.
