Ice Is Where You Find It

U.S. arctic naval operations, 1943-44; "Operation Highjump" 1946-47; Bering Sea Patrol, 1948. Author is a Captain in U.S. Coast Guard.

"You never can tell about ice—what it will be like—until you get there. Remember, ice is where you find it." Captain Thomas, whom Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd has termed “one of the best ice sailors alive,” was to recall his first lesson in polar navigation many times. He learned it the hard way when he was assigned to the command of the Coast Guard cutter Northland on wartime duty with the Greenland Patrol. Before 1943, though he was an experienced officer, he knew about ice only to the extent of grappling with the trays of his refrigerator! This was new business. Orders to hunt for Nazi weather stations meant combating a highly unpredictable foe, learning myriad tricks and a whole new jargon about compact fields, close pack, moderate pack, brash, floebergs, heaping ice, young ice, turret ice. The Northland's skipper was an “ice worm.” Ice Is Where You Find It is a colorful account of six expeditions which, linked together, round out a full circle of an expert navigator's exciting experiences in the frozen waters of both the Arctic and the Antarctic Circles. The first missions were of great military importance despite the fact that there were only a handful of German scientists and technicians in the far North Atlantic area—needles in a vast frozen haystack. This is a book about versatile men who—regard-less of peace or war—match their wits with weather, spend rigorous lives in the interests of science, patriotism and humanitarianism, and get a kick out of it! The tougher the assignment, the greater the challenge to coastguardmen in whose vocabulary there is no word “can't.”

U.S. arctic naval operations, 1943-44; "Operation Highjump" 1946-47; Bering Sea Patrol, 1948. Author is a Captain in U.S. Coast Guard.

Many Americans imagine the Arctic as harsh, freezing, and nearly uninhabitable. The living Arctic, however—the one experienced by native Inuit and others who work and travel there—is a diverse region shaped by much more than stereotype and mythology. Do You See Ice? presents a history of Arctic encounters from 1850 to 1920 based on Inuit and American accounts, revealing how people made sense of new or changing environments. Routledge vividly depicts the experiences of American whalers and explorers in Inuit homelands. Conversely, she relates stories of Inuit who traveled to the northeastern United States and were similarly challenged by the norms, practices, and weather they found there. Standing apart from earlier books of Arctic cultural research—which tend to focus on either Western expeditions or Inuit life—Do You See Ice? explores relationships between these two groups in a range of northern and temperate locations. Based on archival research and conversations with Inuit Elders and experts, Routledge’s book is grounded by ideas of home: how Inuit and Americans often experienced each other’s countries as dangerous and inhospitable, how they tried to feel at home in unfamiliar places, and why these feelings and experiences continue to resonate today. The author intends to donate all royalties from this book to the Elders’ Room at the Angmarlik Center in Pangnirtung, Nunavut.

From bestselling author James Raffan comes an enlightening and original story about a polar bear’s precarious existence in the changing Arctic, reminiscent of John Vaillant’s The Golden Spruce. Nanurjuk, “the bear-spirited one,” is hunting for seals on Hudson Bay, where ice never lasts more than one season. For her and her young, everything is in flux. From the top of the world, Hudson Bay looks like an enormous paw print on the torso of the continent, and through a vast network of lakes and rivers, this bay connects to oceans across the globe. Here, at the heart of everything, walks Nanurjuk, or Nanu, one polar bear among the six thousand that traverse the 1.23 million square kilometers of ice and snow covering the bay. For millennia, Nanu’s ancestors have roamed this great expanse, living, evolving, and surviving alongside human beings in one of the most challenging and unforgiving habitats on earth. But that world is changing. In the Arctic’s lands and waters, oil has been extracted—and spilled. As global temperatures have risen, the sea ice that Nanu and her young need to hunt seal and fish has melted, forcing them to wait on land where the delicate balance between them and their two-legged neighbors has now shifted. This is the icescape that author and geographer James Raffan invites us to inhabit in Ice Walker. In precise and provocative prose, he brings readers inside Nanu’s world as she treks uncertainly around the heart of Hudson Bay, searching for nourishment for the children that grow inside her. She stops at nothing to protect her cubs from the dangers she can see—other bears, wolves, whales, human beings—and those she cannot. By focusing his lens on this bear family, Raffan closes the gap between humans and bears, showing us how, like the water of the Hudson Bay, our existence—and our future—is tied to Nanu’s. He asks us to consider what might be done about this fragile world before it is gone for good. Masterful, vivid, and haunting, Ice Walker is an utterly unique piece of creative nonfiction and a deeply affecting call to action.

In light of climate change and humanitys increasingly complex and nuanced relationship with the natural world, this book serves as an accessible point of entry into complex ideas. Miller uses Antarctica as a point on entry for contemplating humanitys relationship with the natural world.