"One bright morning a dozen years ago, Clarence Wood and I stood on the crest of a birch knoll, looking out over the upper Kobuk valley. Before us, thousands of caribou graved, dark specks trailing off into the blue-white distance. Clarence turned, his eathered Eskimo face split b a wide grin. 'Lots,' he said quietly. 'Lots.' The longer I live here and write, the more I find myself following Clarence's cue --- turning to smpler words, and fewer of them. My hope, in these twenty-eight brief essays about life in the Alaskan arctic, is to find words not big enough, but small enough for a landscape and a place without end." From the Preface, page 11 Excerpted from A Place Beyond: Finding Home in Arctic Alaska by Jans Nick All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
