Down the Wild River North

Not a book of fiction but the true story of a very different and fearless woman who loved to explore remote places of towering beauty, but everpresent danger. She will teach you to travel to wilderness areas with joy and caution. How important it is for safety to take your time and think things thru. She took her daughters on the journey of a lifetime and it changed them forever. This book will change you too. It changed my father, who recommended this book to me and it changed me as well. Read it!!!

I would recommend this book for anyone with a thirst for adventure, and for women and girls especially, so they can dream and execute their own adventures, whether grand and long like this one, or something closer to home. Her daughter Jean Aspen has also written books about her own adventures as an adult and credits her Mom and the trip she took with her related in this book, Down the Wild River North. This is a great story of a woman who had previously spent years in the Arctic living and exploring, and her wish to share a bit of that experience and adventure with her two teenage daughters - to show them the wonder, the hard work, and the ability to deal with whatever presented itself. She had great confidence that they would learn to love the experience of the far North, as well as build endurance, strength of character, and a strong belief in their abilities as to what they could accomplish, no matter where their adult lives would take them. She also hoped to give her daughters a taste and a thirst for adventure, as well as appreciating and enjoying the many people of differing and often unusual lifestyles and work lives that they met in their travels. For the author, a grand experience to help her daughters build their confidence and their character, to appreciate and learn from many people who may be different than themselves, and to deal with whatever obstacles may present themselves on their paths in life.

When I first got this book, though I read a lot, I was a bit intimidated by the size of it. I wondered if it was going to drag on and on and put off reading it for awhile. That was a mistake. I wish it was twice as long. I got turned on to the book after reading and loving Jean Aspen's two books, Arctic Daughter and Arctic Son. Constance Helmericks was her mother, and Down the Wild River North is the story of how Jean and her sister were saved from their mundane suburban existance by a fearless, adventurous mother who was determined to see that her daughters truly understood what wilderness meant, firsthand. The story is both fully engaging and well-written. I love the language of that time period, of the '60s. I love the feel of it, of the emotions of leaving security and family behind for a crazy canoe trip down wild rivers that only Indians and trappers dare traverse. This is also an inspirational journey for all those parents who think they can't do things like this with their children. Here is a single parent taking her two kids into situations most of us will never dare....and the transformation of the family is poignant. I sure wish that there more like this one.

Connie Helmericks is the bravest, brashest, most adventuresome woman I have ever seen! The woman fears nothing but admits to being "frightened" at times by such trivial things as a polar bear busting through the front door of her snow cabin! (this was from another one of her adventures, "Our Alaskan Winter") Connie took her 13 and 15 year old daughters on a thousand mile trip down the McKinsey River in Canada to the Arctic Sea! She suffered the growing pains of her daughters and all the inherent hardships of a camping canoe trip of months long duration. Visiting Great Slave Lake and Great Bear Lake were just two of many adventuresome milestones during her trip! Connie Helmericks has the ability to "take you there" with her on her trip! What a splendid writer! I love this woman! Thank you Connie Helmericks, for writing such an enriching, adventuresome book!

Connie Helmericks is the bravest, brashest, most adventuresome woman I have ever seen! The woman fears nothing but admits to being "frightened" at times by such trivial things as a polar bear busting through the front door of her snow cabin! (this was from another one of her adventures, "Our Alaskan Winter") Connie took her 13 and 15 year old daughters on a thousand mile trip down the McKinsey River in Canada to the Arctic Sea! She suffered the growing pains of her daughters and all the inherent hardships of a camping canoe trip of months long duration. Visiting Great Slave Lake and Great Bear Lake were just two of many adventuresome milestones during her trip! Connie Helmericks has the ability to "take you there" with her on her trip! What a splendid writer! I love this woman! Thank you Connie Helmericks, for writing such an enriching, adventuresome book!

Published in 1968, "Down the Wild River North" by Constance Helmericks is a a great adventure story of a mother and her two teenage daughters (Ann, 12 and Jean, 14 - later Jean Apsen) canoeing over two summers on the Peace, Slave and Mackenzie River Systems in Northern Canada, down to the Arctic Ocean. It's canoeing and life in the outdoors long before high tech gear was available. Among many other bits and pieces, she wrote of the muddy banks and the difficulty of making landings, especially in swift currents. And also of picking campsites. There's some great descriptions of teenagers as well as of the trip itself. Personally, having reread the book a couple of times over the last few years, I really enjoy it. Constance Helmericks was a good writer and her writing style doesn't date much, unlike some writers of similar books from the same time period. If you're interested in a good entertaining read about canoeing for fun and life in the outdoors in the Canadian North in the 1960's, it's a good pick. Incidentally, Connie's daughter, Jean Aspen, has also written a book about living (or perhaps more appropriately, surviving) in Bush Alaska called "Arctic Daughter".