Alaska I must go

 

 

The Sun Is a Compass:
A 4,000-Mile Journey into the Alaskan Wilds
by Caroline Van Hemert

Why in the world would a man and woman hike, paddle and sludge from Seattle to places way up on top of Alaska where Russia seems a short swim across the Chukchi Sea? Because....

Grainy photographs show a man and his dog in the summer of 1989, tracing their way across the Brooks Range through many of the same areas we plan to traverse. The landscape is exactly how I had imagined it, endless tundra-covered ridges and valleys thick with caribou. Basking in the low-angle sun, this patch of earth sings from the page. I hear the early-morning chorus of Lapland longspurs and Savannah sparrows, Arctic warblers and gray-cheeked thrushes. I feel the pulse of energy that arrives with summer's short glow.

This is hands-down the best travel book I've read since Blue Highways. Ms. Hemert pours her guts out on the page, and she's got plenty of guts to spare. It's hard and happy and uplifting and so very depressing on every page. And scary. And glorious. Yeah!