Cold Oceans: Adventures in Kayak, Rowboat, and Dogsled (Hardcover)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

From its opening passages, Jon Turk's Cold Oceans chronicles explorations in both exterior and interior landscapes. In honest, accessible prose, Turk retraces more than two decades of his varied and stirring adventures--attempting to round Cape Horn solo in a kayak, rowing the Northwest Passage, dogsledding the east coast of Baffin Island, and kayaking from Ellesmere Island to Greenland. As Turk plunges headlong through icy seas, repeated and assorted blunders, and bouts of personal lows, he transcends mere adventure storytelling to explore a changing notion of himself, deepening relationships, and the nature of failure and true success. These passages contain some of Cold Oceans's greatest riches.

With a host of explorers along as inspirational and literary companions, Turk evokes a landscape of life and history intertwined. After a daring 15-hour crossing to Greenland, Turk wrestles with polar explorer Robert Peary's notion of success, defined by fame and fortune, concluding, "What mattered was that he [Peary] communicated his passion to the world." And this is the success that Turk has achieved in Cold Oceans.

Although the saga of choosing a life of adventure to stave off a more rooted and standard existence may seem a common tale, it is Turk's contemplation of this lifestyle choice that offers some of the book's finest insights. Ultimately, Turk's wanderings reveal how a thirst for adventure can at once drive, fragment, and unify a life. This incongruity is perhaps one of a traveler's greatest ponderings, and Cold Oceans confronts it boldly, piercing the heart of what it means to adventure. --Byron Ricks

From Publishers Weekly

Some of the most forbidding areas of the planet, from the Antarctic seas to Canada's Baffin Island, form the backdrop to this lumbering, highly personal memoir of dangerous treks and voyages across inhospitable terrain and water. Despite little experience and, it would seem, not a lot of common sense, Turk, a chemist and adventurer who works on promotion and product development for the outdoor apparel company the North Face, consistently embarks on grand journeys in "some of the coldest, wettest, most remote regions of the world," then bites off more than he can chew. Ill-planned efforts to kayak around Cape Horn and dogsled across Baffin fall short of their goals. There are poignant moments along the way?Turk's account of a sled dog's death and images of snowmobile-riding Inuits who reverentially refer to "the old days" are memorable. But Turk's belief that he can tackle any endeavor without training or wisdom extends at times to his writing. His many wilderness descriptions and epiphanies sometimes lead to prose as rough-hewn?and nearly as compelling?as the landscape itself: "When you climb a mountain, the way back is always downhill." Though readers will likely find tough sledding even when on familiar territory, most will find it hard to be too put off by an adventurer who lost an opportunity to paddle through the Northwest Passage because, in planning, "I had ignored distance, ice, and wind." Five maps. (Sept.) FYI: The North Face is sponsoring Turk's six-city book tour in September.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Harpercollins; 1st edition (September 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060191473
• ISBN-13: 978-0060191474
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,072,775 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Cold Oceans are chilly & fine!, May 22, 2000

By	Rebecca Brown "rebeccasreads" (Clallam Bay, WA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

A wonderful read! Great for those long winter evenings beside a warm fire, a cup of tea & Jon Turk as he candidly recounts some of his solo & fascinating sea-going adventures of shipwrecks off Cape Horn to the seas of the Northwest Passage; from Arctic blizzards to an ancient Inuit migration route to Greenland - all by kayak, rowboat or dogsled. Jon Turk is also well-versed in the history of the places he is drawn to which gives us a broader perspective. A pleasant & pensive read. Makes a great gift! ..............................

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A journal of self-discovery in the Wild, January 5, 2001

By	B. Harriger (Cedar Park, TX USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Wonderful book. This title is as much a journal of one man's self discovery as it is a chronicle of his adventures. You start out not liking this man very much (at least I did), but as you near the end your opinion will have changed and you feel like you have been privy to something special.

I'm afraid that reviewer VanRoy missed the point. This is not a manual or chronicle of well planned, expertly executed high adventure, it's the story of one man's steps and mis-steps in life set against the back-drop of some of the worlds wildest and most inhospital places.

If you are looking for just an adventure chronicle you may want to go buy something like The Endurance (Shackleton's adventure to Antartica). If you want to experience a wonderful mix of adventure of body, mind, and spirit set against some of the most beautiful places on earth get this book.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's rare that captivating adventures produce great writing!, March 21, 1999

By A Customer

Chapters range from one to four pages, and each one is shaped by Turk's pen into a comic or thoughtful, dramatic or narrative whole. You can pick the book up and read any of these vignettes at random; a treat is there, whether you have read the previous ones or not. If, like me, you have a shelf in your bookcase where you keep those few books you can read again and again for the sheer pleasure of their words and images, books that can inspire you to write more cleanly and clearly, I think you will conclude that Cold Oceans belongs on that shelf. (Excerpt from review in Open-Water Rowing newsletter.)