Debbie Miller with her daughters Casey (left) and Robin (right) hiking Triple Lakes Trail in Denali. (Photo provided by Debbie Miller)
This is part of Alaska Authors, an occasional series about authors and other literary figures with ties to the 49th state.
Fifty years ago, Debbie and Dennis Miller left their California home and moved to Alaska for an adventure. For Debbie, it was the beginning of an odyssey that has taken her to nearly every corner of the state, resulting in 16 children’s books, and eight titles aimed at adults that she’s either authored, co-authored, or contributed to.
“I had no intention of having a career as an author,” Miller said. “But when you suddenly live in this new, astonishing environment, inspired by the wilderness and wildlife of Alaska, you’re compelled to write.”
The best known of Miller’s books, “Midnight Wilderness: Journeys in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge,” is a classic of Alaska environmental writing that has long inspired readers to support keeping the refuge wild and prevent oil development from occurring there.
It’s just one of Alaska’s diverse environments that Miller has explored during her long sojourn in the North, where she’s made homes in Arctic Village, Fairbanks and now Sitka.
“Sometimes I say to people that I feel like the luckiest person in the world,” she said of her time in those three communities. “Each region is unique with its cultural history, diversity of wildlife, spectacular landscapes and wonderful people.”
Miller’s love for nature extends back to her childhood. Growing up in Belvedere, an island community in Marin County, “I was surrounded by beautiful woods and an intertidal zone within five minutes from the house where I could go beachcombing,” she remembered.
As a teenager she hiked in Muir Woods and backpacked in the Sierras. Her favorite school subjects were biology and English, which she later merged together through her writing. “I often say to students that if you have a passion for a particular subject when you’re in high school, follow those interests.”
She attended college at the University of Denver graduating with an education degree and teaching certification. Afterward, she returned to the Bay Area and found a job at Marin Country Day School. She was initially hired to assist her future husband Dennis lead outdoor education trips in the Sonoran Desert with seventh grade students.
“I loved learning about the desert environment, the geology, and the wildlife with those kids,” she said of the experience.
She taught primary grades, and she and Dennis took older students on backpacking and snowshoeing trips in the Sierras.
Debbie Miller hiking with her grandson Ty in the Grand Tetons. ”Hiking has been a huge part of my life so now it’s a bonus to share wilderness experiences with the next generation,” Miller said. (Photo provided by Debbie Miller)
In 1975, a slideshow in Berkeley introduced them to the Brooks Range. “We thought, why don’t we just quit our jobs and go north,” she recalled. They built a camper on their Ford pickup and drove to Alaska, landing on the Homer Spit. “That’s where I spent my 24th birthday.”
It was the pipeline boom, and teachers were needed across the state, especially in the Bush. Miller took a position in the Gwich’in community of Arctic Village, where Dennis became the first high school teacher the following year.
“I went up there terrified, unsure of teaching in the Arctic, in a remote village where English was a second language,” she said. But upon arrival, “the entire friendly class came to greet me on the dirt strip of the runway. I grew to love and respect the Gwich’in people and their traditional way of life.”
The first person she met was her teacher’s aide, Sarah James, now a revered elder and still a close friend. With help from James and other families, the couple settled into the community. With the Arctic Refuge right out her back door, Miller began exploring and journaling about it, developing a lifelong passion for the perpetually threatened Arctic wilderness and setting the stage for her future writings.
Dissatisfied with her teaching curriculum, Miller decided to create her own. “You do these things when you’re 24,” she said.
She asked students what they wanted to learn about, and they told her they were most interested in Native groups elsewhere in the country.
Miller decided it wasn’t enough to teach them about other Indigenous groups. She wanted her students to know them personally. Pen pals were found, new environments were learned about, and she took the class of fifth through eighth graders went on a cultural exchange trip to Washington, Arizona, New Mexico and California. There they lived with Indigenous tribes and shared cultural traditions and knowledge.
Debbie Miller watches a wolf in Glacier Bay National Park. (Photo courtesy Debbie S. Miller)
In 1980, the Millers relocated to Fairbanks and “quickly fell in love with the community.” Dennis launched Caribou Air Service, while Miller worked at the State Ombudsman Office as an investigator and writer. She took journalism classes at UAF under Dean Gottehrer, started writing magazine articles, and began presenting slide shows about the Arctic Refuge.
During one presentation at the Sierra Club’s San Francisco headquarters, she was introduced to Danny Moses, then the editor of Sierra Club Books. “He said to me, ‘We really need to have a book about the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge,’” and told her she was the one to do it.
“I knew the Arctic Refuge was a unique area in the United States based on 14 years of explorations,” she said. “The thought that anyone could put roads and pipelines across this vast wilderness where I’d seen 100,000 caribou walking past our camp, it was unthinkable.”
Miller felt a bit intimidated by the project, but with encouragement from Gottehrer, advice from Moses, and motivational letters from famed naturalist writer Margaret Murie, she went to work. It was 1989. With her toddler daughter Robin demanding time and another child on the way, she needed to complete it quickly. “I finished the book on March 31, and Casey was born on April 7.”
Debbie Miller with First Lady Rosalynn Carter and President Jimmy Carter along the Okpilak River in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in 1990. (Photo provided by Debbie Miller)
“Midnight Wilderness” was published the following year and attracted nationwide attention. One reader, Alaska wilderness advocate and former President Jimmy Carter, was so impressed that he asked to meet her in the refuge. That summer he and his wife, Rosalynn, came to Miller’s camp on the Okpilak River, where the two families spent a memorable day together.
“He really inspired me,” she remembered. “He said, ‘You should keep writing. It’s important to write about the environment and these lands that we care about and the wildlife.’ Twenty books later, I’m still writing. I really credit him as being an inspirational force.”
By this time, Miller was contemplating writing a kids book about Alaska’s caribou, then-4-year-old Robin’s favorite animal. She met Nancy White Carlstrom, an established children’s author in Fairbanks, who invited her to join the Fairbanks chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Bolstered by the “wonderful local writing group,” Miller submitted the manuscript for “A Caribou Journey” to publisher Little, Brown and Company, where it was accepted.
Debbie Miller with Jon Van Zyle at Gallery by the Sea in Sitka, August 2024. (Photo provided by Debbie Miller)
Unaware that children’s book publishers generally choose their artists, Miller sought out an illustrator. The late Jinx Whitaker, a gallery owner and friend in Fairbanks, suggested Jon Van Zyle, the official artist of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. “I sent him the story and he wrote me back and said, ‘This is great. If you find a publisher, let me know. I’d be interested.’”
Miller asked Van Zyle to send a portfolio to Maria Modugno, her editor. Modugno gave it the nod, telling Miller, “You guys would make a great team.” A partnership now spanning 12 children’s books was born.
Since the 1994 publication of “Caribou Journey,” Miller has worked tirelessly as a writer, educator, and advocate for Alaska’s lands and wildlife. Her name is on 24 books, she’s traveled to 29 states to give school and library programs, and she helped found the Alaska Wilderness League.
By 2012, Miller and Dennis had separated, and she moved to Sitka to be with her new partner, well-known cultural anthropologist and Encounters radio program host Richard Nelson. Together they explored Alaska’s wilderness, Australia’s many national parks, and helped each other on writing and sound recording projects. She’s remained there since Nelson’s 2019 death, writing and continuing her advocacy work while watching deer wander through her garden and clouds roll in from the sea.
“I fell in love with this beautiful community, the Tongass National Forest, and the humpback whales out my window,” she said. “I love all that Southeast is.”
Debbie Miller with her grandchildren Ty and Jordan. “My new book Goodnight Sounds is dedicated to Jordi and she is featured as a character in book,” Miller said. (Photo provided by Debbie Miller)
Miller’s latest book, “Goodnight Sounds,” reaches beyond Alaska. Illustrated by Michelle Jing Chan and dedicated to her granddaughter Jordan, it presents the different sounds that help children across the country fall asleep, including the foghorns that lulled Miller as a child in Northern California. To this day, she said, “when I go to San Francisco, I sleep the best when the foghorns are playing their harmonic sounds.”
Looking back on 50 years in Alaska, writing about its diverse environments and landscapes, Miller said of her rich legacy, “My hope would be that many years from now, a curious child or adult will pick up one of my books and gain a deeper understanding of the subject. Maybe it enriches their life in some way. Or maybe they’ll care about a particular place, person, animal, or something new to them. I hope that people in the future will continue to protect what we all cherish. The extraordinary world of Alaska.”