words, the poles that were once so critical to helping our world stay cool are fast
becoming crucial mechanisms behind
our planet’s much-anticipated and widely
feared climatic tipping point.
Wheeler, who is known for writing
about lonely places and heroic travelers, has long been intrigued by the awful
majesty of the world’s two poles; Terra
Incognita, which she wrote about the Antarctic ten years ago, has become deservedly something of a classic. Now, with
The Magnetic North: Notes from the Arctic
Circle, she has decided to examine the very
di=erent world of the Arctic. This is both
apposite and commendable, since the climate crisis that enfolds the planet is likely
to wreak permanent changes on the lives
of those who live in the region.
And that, of course, is the principal
di=erence between the world’s two polar
extremes. The Antarctic is all land, unclaimed, unpopulated, and has the whole
world trying hard to maintain its pristine
condition. The Arctic, however, is sea
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edged by polar lands with national identi-ties. Arctic dwellers present a mélange of
humanity made up of those who pay fealty
to nations; of those who, like the Eskimos,
the Inupiat, and the Sami, belong to a
pan-Inuit polar culture and who are rather
less inclined to pay fealty to anyone; and
lastly, of a scattering of freebooting resident adventurers for whom the Arctic is,
as it were, cool.
In traveling from northern Ba;n Island to Greenland, from Barrow to the
Chukchi Sea, Wheeler has produced a
melancholy tone poem of great and lyrical beauty, an account that rivals all of the
greatest Arctic writers who have gone before her. And she is evidently tough and
resourceful: when she writes of the Sami,
she does not merely admire their ability
to breast-feed their babies while simultaneously herding their reindeer, but adds
casually, “I tried this when I was among
the herders in 2002 and found it an impossible, Houdini-like maneuver.” (The child,
Reg, flourishes today, with no memory of
his once-attempted Arctic breakfast.)
This is also an unflinching book of
reportage: it looks at loneliness and pol-
lution, alcoholism and illness, and all the
other problems that greed,
Of all her wanderings,
what I found most haunt-
ing was when she ventured
from Murmansk on a Rus-
sian icebreaker, bound
across the Arctic Sea.
This was especially moving because she
brought her older son, Wilf, to show him
what was happening to her beloved North.
She writes: “It was his future that was at
stake in the Big Melt.” And this is where
Sara Wheeler explains, and very patiently
for those of us outside her world who may
not know, just why it is at stake — because
the ice that is melting fast now may soon
melt a great deal faster, and the world
may in consequence suddenly tip into a
new era of warming that is quite unlike
the timid simmering we are experiencing
today.
It all has to do with the graying of the
ice cap and the resulting weakening of the
albedo, an unfamiliar concept signified by
a hitherto unfamiliar word. Thanks to this
bravely wandering author—and perhaps
those in young Wilf’s generation, as they
start to spread the word — it is about to become very well known indeed.
— Simon Winchester
The Nature
Principle
BY RICHARD LOUV
Algonquin Books, 2011. $24.95, 320 pages.
jAMES cAMERon, creator of Avatar,
said his film “asks questions about our
relationship with each other, from culture
to culture, and our relationship with the
natural world at a time of
nature-deficit disorder.” Ava-
tar is “the most-watched
film in history.” The scale
of its success has roots that
reach well beyond the fan-
tastic special e=ects. The
story line tapped a collec-
tive, instinctual knowledge
that our growing alienation
from the natural world
comes at our own peril.
In Last Child in the
Woods, Richard Louv warned that nature-
deficit disorder threatens our health, our
spirit, our economy, and our future stew-
ardship of the environment. Louv’s new-
est book, The Nature Principle: Human
Restoration and the End of Nature-Deficit
