I really enjoyed the book The Sun is a Compass. It is a travel memoir/ adventure story about a couple who travel 4000 miles under their own power from Washington state to Alaska then across the tundra to the east coast. Reading this book kept me up past midnight on several nights. I didn't want to stop reading it. I know I can't row a hand-built boat in the ocean or scramble up snow covered mountain passes or slog through a muddy tundra or swim and wade across freezing rivers or fight a hunting black bear off, but I really enjoyed feeling like I was there with them while they were doing it. There are beautiful photographs at the end of the book. I would have liked to see the photos first. The pictures in my mind of what the arctic looked like were different than the photos. If I had seen the photos first, my mind pictures while I was reading would have been more accurate. Following is a quote from the book. I checked it out as a library book on my e reader, but if you don't have access to a library, it is worth purchasing.
The Arctic as we know it—a land of persistent ice and snow, a home to walruses and polar bears—is quickly becoming legend. The permanence borne of cold, the secrets locked in ten-thousand-year-old frozen soil, erode a little more each day. Despite the models and studies, none of us can predict exactly what is coming. It’s an experiment with many variables but no standards or controls. There’s only one thing we can be sure of: changes are under way, whether a person, or an entire government, chooses to believe in them or not.
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