Jean Aspen

For three decades, Jean Aspen and Tom Irons called Alaska's remote Brooks Range home. Choosing to live lightly with the land, their family built a log cabin and explored the valley on foot-a journey they shared in books and documentaries. Now elders, the couple decide to close the circle and erase their footprints. In their third documentary, they dismantle their home and carefully restore the site to intact wilderness while exploring stewardship, responsibility, and human belonging to our living Earth. ReWilding Kernwood is a layered conversation on release, completion, and finding purpose in the shifting mystery of life.

Arctic Daughter: A Lifetime of Wilderness is the second documentary by Jean Aspen and Tom Irons. Recorded at their cabin in Alaska's remote Brooks Range, it layers historic footage, vivid photos and video and original music to portray Aspen's amazing life. Born to explorer parents, Connie and Bud Helmericks, Jeanie began life in arctic wilds. At twenty-two, she and a friend set off on the Yukon River for a year alone. This lyrical odyssey across seven decades celebrates the art of following one's dreams beyond a beaten trail.

This documentary recounts a family's solo journey into America's last great wilderness. Alone for more than a year, they build a cabin and hunt for food to see them through the Arctic winter. The following summer they embark on a three-week canoe journey back to civilization.