Rating: 
Summary: More than I expected!!
Review: A friend of mine recommended this book to me because I have always been interested in the native people of Alaska and Canada. Jonathan Waterman, in "Arctic Crossings", is very sensative to the Inuit story, not only their history, but also the tenuous circumstances of their lives today. Also, I was very touched by the sharing of his tender emotions about being alone on a long voyage. AND, I loved his descriptions of the wild life, especially the bears, throughout the book. Included are extrordinry color photographs of wildlife as well as different passages of the trip. The Banff Book Awards agreed: This book was choosen and the Best Adventure Travel Book of 2001.
Rating:
Summary: vivid images of a wilderness and cultural sojourn
Review: Arctic Crossing is a book best read in a few long sittings. In turns it is enthralling and distressing. The time spent in villages was uncomfortable. Jon was looking for something there and it was hard to grasp with all the cultural obstacles. I particularly fliched on the snowmobile ride with the father and son team. As readers we could feel the nuances and big blunders with equal wincing. But it was vivid. I was there with all textures, smells and voices.The long solitary stretches were ripe with images. Jon shared his inner joys, lonliness and self doubt with honest candor. This was quite an undertaking. There are few who would have the courage to take this amazing journey. As readers we are lucky to know what it felt like.
Rating:
Summary: Thoughtful and Revealing
Review: Arctic Crossing is a very thoughtful recording of a challenging personal adventure. I was most struck by the honesty of the author in his observations of himself, the land, and the people who live there. It is not simply an adventure story but addresses important issues of cultural and environmental survival. I am not surprised that it received the Best Book on Adventure Travel from the 2001 Banff Mountain Book Festival!
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Summary: Accurate Portrait of a Land and Culture in Transistion
Review: Author Waterman does it again! Arctic Crossing is a very readable and powerful solo tale of high drama in one of the most unforgiving corners of our planet. Jon's richly written tale captures the many moods of both a hauntingly beautiful landscape and the Inuit Culture that inhabit it. The myriad challenges faced by the author in his epic trek should be reason enough to lure virtually any adventure travel reader. Offering far more than yet another tale of polar endurance, Waterman's keen observations of Inuit Culture becomes the unexpected hook. Having spent three years living in a remote Siberian Yupik Eskimo village, I found this book to be compelling in its honest appraisal of Indigenous Northern Culture. Rapid cultural change and its associated dysfunction which challenges many Arctic cultures is typically not well documented in print. That which exists often times is either candy coated or worse yet, over sensationalized. Reported with a sense of respect, Jon's accounting of cultural interactions are at times brutal, yet refreshingly accurate. This book captures the unique rhythms of remote Arctic ecosystems through rich imagery. The author was very obviously moved by his time spent in the spare pastel light of the Barrens. His writing is focused on capturing that elusive essence of the Arctic experience that defies the average writer's efforts. Fortunately, Waterman is no ordinary writer.
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Summary: Adventure, anthropology, and solitude
Review: Few books today successfully address the "human condition" in a way that is simultaneously sincere, thoughtful, and original. Through the story of his journey across the Artic, Waterman addresses our conflicting longings for both solitude and society. At once a captivating work of adventure and anthropology, ARTIC CROSSING is much more than a travel log. Waterman's vivid writing about the Inuit will prompt readers to consider their connection to nature, each other, and themselves. Waterman's humble approach to his journey and the Inuit culture is a reminder that, even in this time without heros, we will never lose our desire to search.
Rating:
Summary: excellent book
Review: I am always amazed and delighted by Jonathan Waterman's skill with language, and with his ability to convey his explorations of both external and internal landscapes. This is a writer who loves wild places, but never seeks to conquer them.
Arctic Crossing gives readers a genuine view into the challenges of solitary travel, and a welcome understanding of the rich Inuit culture.
Waterman sugar coats nothing - not the cold, not the real dangers of his travels.Yet he captures the sweetness of learning to "watch birds" rather than identify, of a reunion with his wife that helps him regain his center. He catapults readers right into places in the world and in the heart that most would have never otherwise travelled.
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Summary: ain't no arctic wide enough
Review: I am always amazed and delighted by Jonathan Waterman's skill with language, and with his ability to convey his explorations of both external and internal landscapes. This is a writer who loves wild places, but never seeks to conquer them.
Arctic Crossing gives readers a genuine view into the challenges of solitary travel, and a welcome understanding of the rich Inuit culture.
Waterman sugar coats nothing - not the cold, not the real dangers of his travels.Yet he captures the sweetness of learning to "watch birds" rather than identify, of a reunion with his wife that helps him regain his center. He catapults readers right into places in the world and in the heart that most would have never otherwise travelled.
Rating:
Summary: A thoughtful adventurer and a great writer!
Review: I like Jon's writing, it's filled with thought and insight into the place where he is. Wether he's preparing to climb the mountains of Alaska, kayak the gulf of Baja, or traverse the frigid Canadian Arctic, Jon does his homework. I am impressed by the degree of research he puts in prior to embarking on a trip. For it is not just the how of adventuring, the going from point A to B that concerns him, but rather who has been there before, who is there now, what was this place like and how has it changed for better or worse. In this, his eighth book, he tells us about his 1997 2,200-mile journey across the Arctic, much of it alone. Here are his first-hand observations of the Inuit - their life, language, beliefs, and their reactions to global assimilation. He also reveals the extreme physical risks and psychological dangers as he kayaked and skied the legendary Northwest Passage. This book recently won the 2001 Banff Mountain Book Festival Best Adventure Travel Book Award. You can't go wrong with any of Jon's books. I look forward to his next work!
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Summary: An Honest Journey
Review: I was touched by the sincerity that Jonathan Waterman shares with his readers in this epic journey across Arctic Alaska and Canada. He is a very good writer, and obviously a keen listener and a skilled outdoorsman. He endears himself to the Eskimo and the Inuit, and wins their trust and friendship. He does this, I believe, because he moves through the country with patience and humility. He admits his fears in a manner I've not found in other books of this genre. His doubts remind me of Shackleton on the Weddell Sea ice: "Put footstep of courage into stirrup of patience." Yet Waterman has no shipmates to banter with, no fraternity to lean upon. And this imparts a keen drama into the story when after many days alone he reaches a settlement, or a fish camp, and finds himself among the parchment-skinned people who have lived there for thousands of years. In a single page he quotes Lord Byron and describes a place "bedrocked by dinosaurs." He offers a sobering look at Prudhoe Bay, where a uniformed man with a holstered gun tells him to go away. Waterman could have editorialized for a full page here, but he allows the reader to draw his/her own conclusions. I admire that restraint. This book is a slow breaking wave, full of momentum and force. I wish more were like it, written by a gifted writer who might not be out to commit an act of literature, but does just that in spite of himself.
Rating:
Summary: excellent book
Review: in Arctic Crossing Jonathan Waterman, Kabloona extraordinaire gives us a a great gift. This guy can write, this guy can listen to the silence, this guy can paddle,hike, take in the wonder and freezing cold andbring it back home to those of us all warm in our living rooms. this guy is amazing.
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