who has lived for over sixty years on a remote island in the Colville River Delta on the edge of the Arctic Ocean along Alaska's northern coast. It is an amazing saga of a frontier-homestead life laced with hard work, adventures, struggles, joys, setbacks, and successes--all wrapped in a fiercely independent and free lifestyle.

The description of life in this harsh but beautiful land spans the early years of great isolation, through the years of the discovery, development, and expanding of the petroleum industry which brought increasing population surrounding the once extremely isolated homestead. These stories stretch over 60 years of wilderness survival beginning with the early days of bare necessities and tent accommodations, to a modern home with all the amenities; from transportation limited to a small bush airplane in which to cross the vast distances between home and civilization, to vehicles traveling those distances on new roads; from going months between any communication with the outside world, to constant digital communications now available in the modern world.

The Helmericks home is an island of wilderness, a specially protected sanctuary that is home to hundreds of birds and other wildlife. The land has remained unchanged even though their living conditions have evolved from small tents to modern homes and isolation has given way to more neighbors. Despite the many changes all around them, the Helmericks love and hang on to the independent life they have carved out of a harsh but beautiful land.