Frank Keim is an educator, nature writer, and environmental activist who has resided in Alaska since 1961. He worked for two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer on the Bolivian Altiplano; as an anthropologist in Ecuador for four years; and as a secondary school teacher of Yup’ik Eskimos in four small Eskimo villages in Alaska’s Lower Yukon Delta for 21 years. He has three poetry books published: Voices on the Wind (2011), Today I Caught Your Spirit (2014), and Trails Taken ... so many still to take (2018). His Wilderness River books were published in 2012 and 2020 respectively: White Water Blue: Paddling and Trekking Alaska’s Wild Rivers, and Down Alaska’s Wild Rivers: Journals of an Alaskan Naturalist.
Frank enjoys canoing, wood carving, and drawing birds for an in-progress on-line book entitled Yup’ik Bird Book. He lives in an octagon that he and his wife, Jennifer, built themselves north of Fairbanks, Alaska.
Down Alaska’s Wild Rivers: Journals of an Alaskan Naturalist Third Edition
Paperback $25.95 + S/H
365 pages, 6"x9"
ISBN 13 - 978-1-945432-65-1
Frank Keim, poet, educator, environmentalist, naturalist, lives in Fairbanks, and has written several books of poetry, plus a previous book describing Alaska river trips—White Water Blue, from 2012. In this new book, Frank describes 11 different trips on wild Alaskan rivers—all but one being up in the Arctic; the last is in Wood Tikchik State Park in south central Alaska—a vast compendium of connected lakes and rivers. At least one trek described is not actually on a river, but backpacking in the Sadlerochit Mountains in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
In his new book, Down Alaska’s Wild Rivers, Frank Keim describes 11 different trips on wild Alaskan rivers—all but one being up in the Arctic; the last is in Wood Tikchik State Park in south central Alaska—a vast compendium of connected lakes and rivers. At least one trek described is not actually on a river, but backpacking in the Sadlerochit Mountains in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
When I began reading Frank’s book, I was amazed at the level of detailed day-by-day description. Do we really need this much detail? I mused. But what at first seemed excessive quickly became the “meat”, the crux of the trip descriptions—the daily journal format made me feel as though I was right there really sharing the adventure with Frank and his family or friends. As I read, I felt absorbed into the day-by-day account, including exceptionally detailed identifications and descriptions of many kinds of birds and plants—their appearances and, at least for birds, their movements and activities. Frank has a truly thorough knowledge of the many bird species and flowering plants encountered. In time, as I seemed to be headed toward finishing the book too fast, I rationed myself to follow along—reading one chapter day per day. The rivers he traveled include the Sheenjek, Kongakut, Yukon, Birch Creek, Spring Creek and Marsh Fork, Canning, Ivishak, Delta, and the Wood-Tikchik lake and river systems in southwest Alaska.
-- from review by Vicky Hoover
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