Death on the Barrens: A True Story of Courage and Tragedy in the Canadian Arctic [Paperback]

George James Grinnell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 20, 2010

Set in the remote arctic region of Northern Canada, this book takes readers on a harrowing canoe voyage that results in tragedy, redemption, and, ultimately, transformation. George Grinnell was one of six young men who set off on the 1955 expedition led by experienced wilderness canoeist Art Moffatt. Poorly planned and executed, the journey seemed doomed from the start. Ignoring the approaching winter, the men became entranced with the peace and beauty of the arctic in autumn. As winter closed in, they suddenly faced numbing cold and dwindling food. When the crew is swept over a waterfall, Moffatt is killed and most of the gear and emergency food supplies destroyed. Confronting freezing conditions and near starvation, the remaining crew struggled to make it back to civilization. For Grinnell, the three-month expedition was both a rite of passage and a spiritual odyssey. In the Barrens, he lost his sense of identity and what he had been conditioned to think about society and himself. Forever changed by the experience, he unsparingly describes how the expedition influenced his adult life and what powerful insights he was able to glean from this life-altering experience.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A Letter to Amazon Readers from George Grinnell

Dear Amazon.com readers,

At the beginning of the trip that I describe in Death on the Barrens, I had said to myself, "If things get rough, at least I will not be the first to die." I had just been discharged from the Army and was in better physical condition than the others, but, by the end of the trip I was thinking very different thoughts: "I hope I will not be the last to die." By the end of the trip, I took pride not in my own strength, for it was laughable compared to the power of the wind that had ripped the tent I was sleeping in to shreds, or the power of the cataracts which had flipped our canoes as if they were toys, or of the cold which had killed Art--by the end of the trip, I took pride only in what I could do for others because I did not want to be the last to die. I was scared of dying alone.

Although I was terrified of dying, there were moments when I felt so at peace that I just wanted to remain in the arctic forever. Having my terror transformed by beauty into awe was like receiving, what mystics call, the ecstasy of the grace of God. It is such a wonderful feeling--a mixture of awe, peace, and love--that, if I could, I would share it.

Yours sincerely,
George James Grinnell

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Questions for George Grinnell

Q: Recalling the hardships of the catastrophic canoe voyage of 1955 must be difficult and painful, at times. What made you decide to write Death on the Barrens?
A: I was telling the story to some friends at dinner one night, fifty years ago, and one of them, Professor Ed Chalfant said: "Write the book." The next day he gave me his typewriter. I have been typing ever since trying to convey what perhaps cannot be conveyed: the transformation of terror into awe.

Q: Something that makes your book so wonderful is that you offer philosophical insight into the Barrens expedition, and reflections on your life since. What do you want readers to take away from reading the book?
A: I would like readers to take away the idea that awe transforms vanity into love, and love is the source of the inner peace which we all desire.

Q: Through your experiences and through the writing of this book, what have you learned about human nature that isn't common knowledge?
A: I’ve learned that it is necessary to empty oneself if one wants to receive the gift of awe, love, and peace, which is the gift of the wilderness to troubled souls.

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Review

“Judges, such as this reviewer, are often asked to evaluate the veracity and credibility of distant accounts of misadventure culminating in a death. No one who reads this story should entertain any doubt as to the scrupulous accuracy of this narrative, which chronicles the author's 1955 journey through the Canadian arctic with four friends. Bad planning left them without food or adequate warmth as winter closed in, and the group leader eventually died of hypothermia. Although the account reminds one of Farley Mowat's adventure novel, Lost in the Barrens, not to mention James A. Michener's Journey: A Novel, the detailed descriptions of the sensations endured by the writer, the haunting and evocative images he sets forth with poetic grace and erudite references, and the harrowing emotional roller-coaster he experienced in 1955—and every year since—leaves no doubt as to the fidelity of this first-person story of exploration, adventure and tragedy. VERDICT Superbly illustrated, this work represents the best that human kind and nature have to offer: courage, beauty and the challenge to survive. Recommended for all readers of true adventure or memoir.”
—Library Journal starred review, Gilles Renaud, Ontario Court of Justice

“Death on the Barrens is a must read for anyone who has seriously considered entering absolute wilderness, and for those who already know a step off the grid into a place like the Barrens can have a profound impact that reverberates through the rest of one’s days.”
—Cary J. Griffith, author of Lost in the Wild: Danger and Survival in the North Woods

“… [The] three-month canoe trip across the uninhabited Canadian Barrens takes George Grinnell to the lip of the abyss that separates sanity from insanity and life from death. And it is his firsthand exploration of this uncertain edge that provides the profound insights that makes this a most powerful and unique narrative.”
—George Luste, from the Introduction

“A finely wrought distillation of half of a century spent looking for an explanation where none perhaps exists. Death on the Barrens tells of many deaths in an austere and unforgiving land of imponderable majesty where sentience extends far beyond human kind.”
—Farley Mowat, legendary author of People of the Deer and Never Cry Wolf

“A nice combination of struggling against nature and self-realization, this short book was enjoyable and thought-provoking.”
—The Philbrick-James Forum

“George James Grinnell brings tragedy of Into the Wild and the philosophy of the poets to his non-fiction account of a three-month pleasure trip by canoe and portage across the Canadian Barrens in 1955… Death on the Barrens meditates on beauty, loneliness, and the meaning of life while roaring down the rapids or battling the black flies or trying to outwait a blizzard without freezing to death in a ripped tent. It is a clear statement of our need for belief in something more than ourselves.”
—Read, Write, Laugh, Rewrite with Eileen Granfors

“This was an excellent memoir. For the outdoor and nature types I recommend [Death on the Barrens] highly. George, referring to himself as Jim in the book, tells us a heart wrenching and harrowing journey of six men through the Barrens… Not only is the adventurous side of the story told, but the spiritual experience of being out in the wilderness is explained. This was an intense read.”
—The Cajun Book Lady

“In these pages, you will learn how time and a doomed escapade into the Barrens can change a man…how marvelous and wonderful nature can be and how it can also be your worst enemy… The author’s descriptions and recollections help to bring this powerful novel to life… [Death on the Barrens is] a very powerful and intelligently written memoir about the 1955 canoeing expedition which took the life of one man and changed the souls of the others.”
—BookPleasures.com

“Despite all of the obstacles in the book, the absolute honesty of the author shines through providing a tiny little ray of hope in his bleak world… Death on the Barrens is beautifully written…this book will keep you interested until the very end.”
—The Book Buff

“Grinnell's account affects the reader on several levels. He details the practical side of the trip...the physical exertion of canoeing and portaging; the exhilaration of shooting rapids; the camaraderie of the men; the psychological signs of suspicion, paranoia, and even questions of sanity...there's also a spiritual element... Grinnell quotes literature, poetry, scripture, Zen koans and Indian legend. The writing is very nice, and at times even lyrical.”
—The Record-Courier

“While the canoeists' trip could be critiqued—inadequate food, too many days spent relaxing during good traveling weather—Grinnell does not place blame. Instead, he remembers how their leader took them ‘to a place of peace’ and ‘a time when my fears had been elevated through beauty into awe, when my vanity had been transformed by awe into love, and when love had bathed my soul in the waters of eternal peace.’ For that he experienced starvation, frostbite, and near-drowning… Yet though Grinnell admits to being lost in despair at times, this is a book of recovery and acceptance.”
—Southern Rockies Nature Blog

“[Grinnell] tells this story with amazing poise, instantly drawing the reader in. One can almost feel the mist of the river and the bumping of the rapids, and later the cold and hunger. There is a lot of emotion caught within these pages. Add the stunning watercolors that help to break up the book and you have a true gem.”
—Reading for Sanity

“[In the Canadian Barrens, George James Grinnell] revels in the pristine vistas devoid of man while vacillating between fear of dying and awe. Eventually he feels himself disappearing into the landscape, just another caribou in the food chain. Death on the Barrens is a fascinating glimpse at the actions of six men when they have nothing left to confront but themselves.”
—Sheri, Village Books

“I am crazy about survivalist books; Into the Wild (this book completely changed the course of my life), Into Thin Air, Alive, etc… Death on the Barrens is just as captivating a read. Six men plan to traverse the Canadian arctic on canoes and seem to become spellbound with the beauty and lulled into relaxing in the wilderness rather than hurrying to beat the oncoming winter.”
—Jennifer Salita, Midwestern Days

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 296 pages
• Publisher: North Atlantic Books; Reprint edition (April 20, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1556438826
• ISBN-13: 978-1556438820
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.7 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (58 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #266,349 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #35 in Books > Travel > Polar Regions > Arctic
  • #55 in Books > Sports & Outdoors > Outdoor Recreation > Canoeing
  • #70 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Historical > Canadian

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Expedition gone wrong, April 23, 2010

By 

Flight Risk (The Gypsy Moth) "Exiled Yankee" (usa) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Death on the Barrens: A True Story of Courage and Tragedy in the Canadian Arctic (Paperback)

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I like stories of courage in the wilderness, fortitude in the face of adversity, and determination winning against great odds. I've read about Shackelford's incredible success in bringing his crew to safety after being marooned in Antarctica, a truly unbelievable feat; I've read Jon Krakauer's heartbreaking tale of the young man who died in a bus in the wilds of Alaska. This book does not come close to the pure nature of both of those expeditions; I hesitated even to give it four stars, for many reasons, but it is well-written.

George Grinnell, at the time a young man fresh from an exclusive school and with some experience canoeing in the wilderness, joins the expedition of Art Moffatt, an older (to Grinnell) explorer (Moffatt was 36) who is planning to canoe the Barren Grounds near Churchill on the Arctic Circle and down Dubawnt River to a Hudson Bay station. There were five young men plus Moffatt making up the team; all seemed to get along reasonably well, but I did not get the feeling that anything was allowed for; no limitations on food or equipment was made; no accounting, aside from Moffatt's mathematical calculations about how much would be needed for the trip, for use; and the calculations must have very early on gone by the wayside as whenever Moffatt wanted to declare a 'holiday' - which he did with alarming frequency - the whole team parked for sometimes days at a time. I also did not get the notion that anything was done for a purpose, other than the mere journey itself; and the word 'hedonism' must have come to my mind dozens of times. The team seemed to treat this journey, through some of the most inhospitable, uninhabited territory in the world, as an extended class trip. Days of lying around camp, fishing and hunting, were interspersed with canoeing down rapids and over stormy lakes. When someone should have been keeping an eye on the calendar, and the length of time they were taking to get to where they were going, it seems as though no one was taking the trip at all seriously, especially the leader Moffatt, who had an obligation to try to get his charges to safety well before the onset of winter.

The book is full of very nicely done black-and-white watercolor scenes of the Barrens, and of the wildlife that populate it; the men seemed to eat well enough, with many descriptions of huge, beautiful fish and fat caribou caught and cooked; yet Grinnell says they were always hungry. Of course, when they were hiking, canoeing, or otherwise not lounging around camp, they were burning huge amounts of calories; but certainly they were not starving on the scale of the crew of the Franklin Expedition. The troubles they got into were clearly through lack of foresight, and Art Moffatt should have been more mindful of the perils of travelling in such a remote and treacherous area.

Grinnell gets repetitious, and a bit preachy; he constantly falls back on recounting Buddhist jokes, which aren't really jokes at all, and also makes many references to a childhood spent in a wealthy but disconnected family with parents that clearly cared about him but also seemed more concerned about lineage and place than character. He was apparently a young man in search of self, and he didn't get what he was looking for from this trip. Through the inattentions of a leader who should have been following a script and through the inexperience of youth, the entire expedition was put in enormous peril; it's a wonder, at the end (they were still paddling into September, which in the Arctic is a long way from summer), that any of them survived to come home.

Not the best of its kind I have ever read by far, but absorbing enough to make me want to find out what became of them all - and to be glad I wasn't there to experience it myself.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, March 7, 2010

By 

Robert R. Briggs "robroyb" (Santa Barbara, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Death on the Barrens: A True Story of Courage and Tragedy in the Canadian Arctic (Paperback)

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This book was a bit of a disappointment for me. I expected a detailed account of a journey through the rough, uninhabited, northern Canada wilderness. So many adventure stories take you into the footsteps of the story teller and as the epic unfolds you can almost live the narrative yourself. Instead, much of this story revolves around the bickering and problems among the six participants. It baffled me how this group ever got together to make such a trip. They seemed to be fearful and not really sure what they were getting in to. They often argued over food rations, sleeping arrangements and other minor things. I found it strange that, often times, they wondered if they would starve to death. Yet, Canada is abundant in fish and wildlife. Surely, the must have known this.
The last part of the book, after Art Moffatt's death, is more interesting as the author details their survival and final push to their destination and journeys end. He also recaps his later years after this tragic event as he looks back and tries to recapture in words, his remembrance of that time.
I think the story would have been more interesting had the author given a greater description of the daily push through such a rough and beautiful area and spent less time on personal issues.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well- written saga about death and redemption, May 1, 2010

By 

P. B. Sharp (NM) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Death on the Barrens: A True Story of Courage and Tragedy in the Canadian Arctic (Paperback)

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Under the leadership of Art Moffatt, an experienced wilderness canoeist, five young men from privileged Ivy League backgrounds set out in 1955 to cross the Canadian Barrens in northern Canada. The Barrens are a vast, harsh and uninhabited landscape where trees grow only a foot tall, where the aurora borealis casts cold green and red lights upon the frozen tundra, where the vast panorama of stars overhead are close enough to touch.

Little did they know, although leader Moffatt should have, that they were on a razor's edge between life and death and insanity and sanity. In a trip so poorly planned that there was not enough food to last the trip, amid childish squabbles among the men over petty things, they begin a leisurely trip with many days off from the chore of paddling north. Unforgiving winter was staring them in the face, a winter which comes in September, a beast ready to pounce, a beast that can easily destroy them. But still they loiter.

Author Grinnell writes eloquently. The crew is hurtled into the very jaws of death when their canoes are swamped by freezing water and they are barely able to crawl onto land because their fingers and toes are frozen. The description of the men trying to warm each other up inside their sleeping bags, Grinnell inside his cheap six dollar one, is horrific. They pummel on each other trying to get the blood into their frozen limbs, they are a team, now, not a band of quarreling young men, but brothers trying to save each other's lives. However Art, with his rather frail physique, succumbs on September 14, when he literally freezes to death. They tuck him into one of the canoes and carry him up to a hill, and turn the canoe upside down where his body will be safe from marauding wolves.

When the men get back into their canoes again, they know a fear that they have never felt before, and Grinnell's hands shake as he pushes his paddle deep into the cold green water. But he has changed. He has survived, he has been delivered from the abyss, Daniel from the lion's den. He will see more tragedy: his two sons and a nephew will die in the wilderness. He spends the next fifty years of his life looking for meaning where none perhaps exists. But he finds inner peace, perhaps he has found his Shangri-La.

And oddly, in spite of the rigors of that fateful trek so long ago, Grinnell is still so affected by the sheer majesty of the Barrens, even when writing about them fifty years later, he makes you want to go too.