Customer Reviews

Arctic Crossing: A Journey Through the Northwest Passage and Inuit Culture

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I am always amazed and delighted by Jonathan Waterman's skill with language, and with his ability to convey his explorations of both external and internal landscapes. This is a writer who loves wild places, but never seeks to conquer them.
Arctic Crossing gives readers a genuine view into the challenges of solitary travel, and a welcome understanding of the rich Inuit culture.
Waterman sugar coats nothing - not the cold, not the real dangers of his travels.Yet he captures the sweetness of learning to "watch birds" rather than identify, of a reunion with his wife that helps him regain his center. He catapults readers right into places in the world and in the heart that most would have never otherwise travelled.

Jonathan Waterman's book succeeds on several levels. The most important is the treatment the author gives of the Inuit and Inuvialuit communities, their history, and his own interactions with them. The presentation is unsentimental and the reader is rewarded with a view of things as they are. The book presents the historical and present situations in a way that enhances our understanding, though it is by no means clear what exactly should be done by Canada or Nunavut to alleviate the problems. One can only wish the best for this amazing far-north culture.

From the point of view of adventure, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in solo exploration. Waterman is as experienced as they come in the realm of long, strenuous adventures in arduous conditions. He takes on this multi-year kayaking trek without a radio, even though he knows he is not an expert kayaker. While he deals with various problems and incidents, the most intriguing problem seems to be that of simply being alone for long stretches. He survives it, but it was apparently not easy.

Finally, the book succeeds in conveying the beauty of nature (landscape, seascape, birds, and animals) in this shoreline environment. For the author, and probably for most who have visited it, the Arctic is a very special place, and the book, in its prose, general spirit, and photographs conveys that. Regarding the pictures, I appreciated the fact that in addition to the standard color insert, which has excellent photos, the author and publisher have decided to include many black-and-white pictures in the text. These enhance the presentation a lot, especially compared to many adventure books that get published quickly and without real thought to the inclusion of the best photos.

Author Waterman does it again!

Arctic Crossing is a very readable and powerful solo tale of high drama in one of the most unforgiving corners of our planet. Jon's richly written tale captures the many moods of both a hauntingly beautiful landscape and the Inuit Culture that inhabit it. The myriad challenges faced by the author in his epic trek should be reason enough to lure virtually any adventure travel reader. Offering far more than yet another tale of polar endurance, Waterman's keen observations of Inuit Culture becomes the unexpected hook.

Having spent three years living in a remote Siberian Yupik Eskimo village, I found this book to be compelling in its honest appraisal of Indigenous Northern Culture. Rapid cultural change and its associated dysfunction which challenges many Arctic cultures is typically not well documented in print. That which exists often times is either candy coated or worse yet, over sensationalized. Reported with a sense of respect, Jon's accounting of cultural interactions are at times brutal, yet refreshingly accurate.

This book captures the unique rhythms of remote Arctic ecosystems through rich imagery. The author was very obviously moved by his time spent in the spare pastel light of the Barrens. His writing is focused on capturing that elusive essence of the Arctic experience that defies the average writer's efforts. Fortunately, Waterman is no ordinary writer.

This book is beautifully written! Unlike most adventure books, Waterman's account of his 3-year Arctic adventure, leaves behind the hero perspective and sincerely tells a story about the Inuit culture, the Arctic landscape and its amazing wildlife, and how he travels solo through it all. Find out what it would be like to journey alone without seeing another person (or signs of another person) for weeks at a time...how many of us have been completely alone, even for a day? His details of the people once called Eskimos are thoughtful and compassionate. The Inuit are faced with modern day assimilation while desperately trying to hold on to their 1,000 year old traditions. This struggle is carefully outlined, as he was able to get close to "The People". His encounters with wildlife, especially bears, made me wish I were there, but at the same time thankful to be reading about it in the comforts of home. This book is for anyone wanting to know the meaning of true exploration and wanting to learn more about the beuaty and mystery of the Arctic and Inuit.

Who was it who said, "less is more"? That's one truth that stands out in Jonathan Waterman's "Artic Crossing" - a epical solo trip of the Northwest Passage done without fanfare, without oodles of sponsorship dough. I liked the author's cool, understated writing style, the wry observations about his sufferings and about the Inuits. No hyperbole, none of self-inflation that is so common in adventure writing, this book is truly believable. A wonderful read.

This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the Arctic, Alaska--or simply a good adventure tale. Jon Waterman is a veteran of a quarter century's worth of outdoor epics worldwide. ARCTIC CROSSING documents the biggest epic of them all, his solo, muscle-powered odyssey through the Northwest Passage.

Yet ARCTIC CROSSING isn't just a travel narrative. It yields a treasure trove of carefully researched detail about everything from polar bears and seals to Inuit politics and the latest in survival and wilderness travel technique. Read it.

This is one of those rare books that will stand larger with time. Waterman's journey through the Arctic Circle becomes a circling through both a culture and through the soloist's heart, a sort of Odyssey by kayak and with shotgun. There is everything to admire about this thoughtful book, the writing, the almost transparent self protrait, the ineffable scholarship, the raw adventure, and - refreshingly in this day of chest-thumping adrenaline junkies - an ethic of self preservation vs. summit-fever risk taking. Ironically, as the author set out upon this solitary epic, his stated intention was to avoid an epic. He judges the sea currents the way he judges bear tracks, with an eye to not only surviving, but thriving. His storytelling is pitch perfect. In presenting the Inuit, he gives us an ancient hunter culture stripped of the noble savage. He sketches the overlay of post-modern Western civilization in the "wastelands" without a preachment, only a fenceline in the middle of nowhere and surly guards on alert against no one. As icebergs metamorphose into animals, and animals shape-shift into driftwood, we grow into an alternate reality, one where trees are like magical trespassers. He shows this immortal land as entirely mortal and vulnerable, nothing new there. But where he finds a long dead Western explorer, it is cautionary, for it is himself - and us - that lie in the barrens without a witness. All in all, Arctic Crossing is a haunting book, beautifully written, utterly authentic, wise, poignant, and warmed throughout by one man's quest for the human condition.

I was touched by the sincerity that Jonathan Waterman shares with his readers in this epic journey across Arctic Alaska and Canada. He is a very good writer, and obviously a keen listener and a skilled outdoorsman. He endears himself to the Eskimo and the Inuit, and wins their trust and friendship. He does this, I believe, because he moves through the country with patience and humility. He admits his fears in a manner I've not found in other books of this genre. His doubts remind me of Shackleton on the Weddell Sea ice: "Put footstep of courage into stirrup of patience." Yet Waterman has no shipmates to banter with, no fraternity to lean upon. And this imparts a keen drama into the story when after many days alone he reaches a settlement, or a fish camp, and finds himself among the parchment-skinned people who have lived there for thousands of years. In a single page he quotes Lord Byron and describes a place "bedrocked by dinosaurs." He offers a sobering look at Prudhoe Bay, where a uniformed man with a holstered gun tells him to go away. Waterman could have editorialized for a full page here, but he allows the reader to draw his/her own conclusions. I admire that restraint. This book is a slow breaking wave, full of momentum and force. I wish more were like it, written by a gifted writer who might not be out to commit an act of literature, but does just that in spite of himself.

Waterman's books, from "Surviving Denali", "High Alaska", "Kayaking the Vermillion Sea", "A Most Hostile Mountain", to his current odyssey across the northwest passage ask the reader to dig a little deeper than when reading the typical coffee table adventure. He invites you on a journey to a relatively unknown terrain, provides historical, mythical, & cultural perspective on the Inuit, and then expects you to leverage that knowledge to current environmental and political concerns. His forays into exotic lands and what he finds there, offer a thinking man's approach to this world of wonders. And what I like best is that he does it mostly alone... and there is a moral to the story. Shipman and Shackleton would be smiling in their graves. He'd eat the TV "Survivors" yahoos for lunch.

This is a wonderful book. I like to read adventure travel but often dislike the authors. This book not only tells a great adventure travel story with an informative insight into the Inuit culture but is well written and presented by a likable writer. There are many facets to this story. Waterman travels by several different modes including on foot, skis, dog sled, and sailing kayak. He encounters a variety of arctic wildlife and a solitary side of himself. The look at the struggle of the arctic peoples trying to find a place in the modern world is worth the reading all by itself. I can't think of an expedition book that I have read that satisfied so many parts of my mind. Made me want to go there and glad that I can't. Great winter reading. A rare find. I will pass this one on to my friends.