Arctic Ocean

Jeanie of Alaska, 1952

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• published: 03 Feb 2016
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"Jeanie of Alaska" is a silent film by Harmon “Bud” Helmericks and Constance Helmericks, circa 1952. The film includes scenes of Bud, Constance (Connie), and their two-year-old daughter Jeanie at the family’s cabin in the Brooks Range of Alaska, and traveling along Alaska’s northern arctic coast. Bud Helmericks and his first wife Connie Helmericks spent more than a decade living in and exploring northern Alaska during the 1940s and 1950s. Constance was the best-selling author of eight non-fiction books, five detailing their lives and adventures in the far north. Films that the couple shot on 16mm color film were the subject of national lecture tours. Shot with great care and artfulness under extreme living conditions, these films depict the unique lives of the Helmericks family, as well as the rapidly-changing lives of small groups of coastal and inland Iñupiat peoples during the era of pre-Statehood and pre-pipeline Alaska. Daughter Jeanie Helmericks (now Jean Aspen) is a writer who has continued to explore northern Alaska and the Brooks Range throughout her adult life. She and her husband Tom Irons, along with son Luke Irons, have also made films of their time in the wilderness, including the "Arctic Son - Fulfilling the Dream," filmed in 1992. For more information, see the Jean Aspen Papers collection at the Alaska Film Archives and www.jeanaspen.com. Detailed summary information for "We Live in the Arctic" was provided by the filmmakers. According to these notes, the film includes scenes of an airport in Montana; Views en route to Alaska; At Takahula Lake, the Helmericks’ log cabin home in the Brooks Range; Ice-fishing; Flying in May to the still-frozen Arctic Ocean, 300 miles directly north of cabin; Bud setting up Explorers Club flag on a staff; Pitching tent and making a polar camp; Hunting seals and polar bear; at Oliktok Point on the north coast of Alaska; Inside tent with members of the Woods family; Summer evening on the Koyukuk River; Trading post of Hughes; Over the Brooks Range; Sunset rainbow over Takahula Lake in summertime; Building a dock and steps to cabin; Planting garden; Bud hanging moose antlers on cabin gable; Connie and Jeanie paddling through waters of Takahula Lake in homemade kayak; On the Arctic coast in summer - Helmericks family camping with tent; Mosquitoes on Bud’s back; Point Barrow - tractor pushing off a boat; Two views of the polar ice pack as it looks in summer; Walrus hunt; The word HELP appears written on the ground at remote Anaktuvuk Pass in Brooks Range; People, dressed in summer parkas, are worried about a very sick baby (Bud flies the baby to the nearest hospital at Point Barrow - not shown); Family examining a new electric generator weighing 800 pounds which was flown in 100 miles from the trading post; Jeanie crawling over an ancient mastodon tusk on lake shore; Bud motoring up the Alatna River in the big yellow canoe; Caribou and sheep; Bud felling giant spruce tree; Connie at her twin aluminum sinks inside the cabin; Jeanie sampling the pie dough; Bud cutting moose steak; Connie at her typewriter inside the cabin; Outside, the first snow of winter beginning to fall; Barricading the cabin and laying a plank with spikes in front of the door to ward off bears; Bud and unidentified man at Hughes, pulling plane from the Koyukuk River by tractor; Ice cakes running in the Koyukuk; Flying through Anaktuvuk Pass over the Brooks Range once more to the Arctic Ocean; Landing on sand beach of the Colville River delta and waiting for the Arctic Ocean to freeze for ice fishing; Friends look at power generator brought for them; Their old house and view of their new frame house (lumber was ocean-freighted from Point Barrow, 240 miles to the west); Ice-fishing; Sleds full of fish are upset onto the ice, making piles of frozen fish all over the river delta to be picked up at will; Inside the new frame house - looking at the Sears catalog is a popular pastime; Bud draining the oil out of the “Arctic Tern” when the temperature turns 30 below zero; The airfield at Barrow is marked by two lines of empty oil drums on the snow; Scenes at Point Barrow: Tractor is used to haul Arctic Ocean ice (fresh) for drinking water for the village; Panorama of Barrow showing a city without sidewalks or streetlights; Panorama shot ending with the white frame Presbyterian church whose diocese covers an area the size of England and the British Isles; and The End. This sequence contains excerpts from AAF-16005 and AAF-16006 from the Constance Helmericks Papers collection held by the Alaska Film Archives, a unit of the Alaska and Polar Regions Collections & Archives Department in the Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks. For more information about this film, other Helmericks films, and related holdings from the Jean Aspen Papers, please contact the Alaska Film Archives.