Finding the Arctic
272 pages, 7 x 10
193 color plates, 14 maps
Paperback
Release Date:15 Jun 2012
ISBN:9781602231634
Finding the Arctic
History and Culture Along a 2,500-Mile Snowmobile Journey from Alaska to Hudson’s Bay
University of Alaska Press
The history of the Arctic is rich, filled with fascinating and heroic stories of exploration, multicultural interactions, and humans facing nature at its most extreme. In Finding the Arctic, the accomplished arctic researcher Matthew Sturm collects some of the most memorable and moving of these stories and weaves them around his own story of a 2,500-mile snowmobile expedition across arctic Alaska and Canada.
During that trip, Sturm and six companions followed a circuitous route that brought them to many of the most historic spots in the North. They stood in the footsteps of their predecessors, experienced the landscape and the weather, and gained an intimate perspective on notable historical events, all chronicled here by Sturm. Written with humor and pathos, Finding the Arctic is a classic tale of adventure travel. And throughout the book,Sturm, with his thirty-eight years of experience in the North, emerges as an excellent guide for any who wish to understand the Arctic of today and yesterday.
Sturm is an Arctic climate change researcher who has made many trips to the North and can thus write with authority and depth about the history, culture, and environment of the region. . . . The book is handsomely produced, lavishly illustrated with historical and contemporary photographs. . . a must read for anyone interested in the North.
[Finding the Arctic] does an outstanding job of helping [readers] understand a bit of the history of the place, as well as offer insight into its current state. More importantly, it conveys a sense of why so many people have been inexorably drawn into such a forbidding land, sometimes at the cost of their own lives.'
Sturm has enthusiastically brought together a charming book that is entertaining and aesthetically pleasing to the reader. . . The book is a patchwork of contemporary stories, explorations of historical sites and events, and plain-language descriptions of fauna and geography, and it includes a beautiful collection of archival images.
Matthew Sturm is a leader in the Arctic climate change research community and has led over twenty-five expeditions in the Arctic and Antarctic. He is the author of Apun: The Arctic Snow, also published by the University of Alaska Press.
Preface
Introduction
1. Tracks North
Ballad of the Arctic Science Bandits
Changes North
2. Rosebud Realities
Quest’s Older Cousin—The Iditarod
3. Porcupine Hospitality
Quarantine Island
4. Poignant Passing: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
Who Was the Mad Trapper of Rat River
5. Big Mac
Snow and Ice Roads
6. Finding the Douglas Cabin
Black Lake Ice
The Shield and the Cordilleran
Fort Confidence
7. The Northern Cross
8. Kugluktuk
Inuksuk
Sea Ice Going, Going, Gone
9. The Starvation Trail
10. The Diamond Confluence
The Complex Calculus of Barrenlands Diamond Mining
The Oldest Rocks in the World
11. Braided Strands: The First Interloper
Whiteout on Aylmer Lake
Strange Wooly Attractors
12. Braided Strands: The Last Refugee
Acknowledgments
Another Arctic Story
Recommended Reading
Index
Introduction
1. Tracks North
Ballad of the Arctic Science Bandits
Changes North
2. Rosebud Realities
Quest’s Older Cousin—The Iditarod
3. Porcupine Hospitality
Quarantine Island
4. Poignant Passing: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
Who Was the Mad Trapper of Rat River
5. Big Mac
Snow and Ice Roads
6. Finding the Douglas Cabin
Black Lake Ice
The Shield and the Cordilleran
Fort Confidence
7. The Northern Cross
8. Kugluktuk
Inuksuk
Sea Ice Going, Going, Gone
9. The Starvation Trail
10. The Diamond Confluence
The Complex Calculus of Barrenlands Diamond Mining
The Oldest Rocks in the World
11. Braided Strands: The First Interloper
Whiteout on Aylmer Lake
Strange Wooly Attractors
12. Braided Strands: The Last Refugee
Acknowledgments
Another Arctic Story
Recommended Reading
Index
