Tip of the Iceberg
My 3,000-Mile Journey Around Wild Alaska, the Last Great American Frontier
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From the acclaimed, bestselling author of Turn Right at Machu Picchu, a fascinating, wild, and wonder-filled journey into Alaska, America's last frontier
In 1899, railroad magnate Edward H. Harriman organized a most unusual summer voyage to the wilds of Alaska: He converted a steamship into a luxury "floating university," populated by some of America's best and brightest scientists and writers, including the anti-capitalist eco-prophet John Muir. Those aboard encountered a land of immeasurable beauty and impending environmental calamity. More than a hundred years later, Alaska is still America's most sublime wilderness, both the lure that draws one million tourists annually on Inside Passage cruises and as a natural resources larder waiting to be raided. As ever, it remains a magnet for weirdos and dreamers.
Armed with Dramamine and an industrial-strength mosquito net, Mark Adams sets out to retrace the 1899 expedition. Traveling town to town by water, Adams ventures three thousand miles north through Wrangell, Juneau, and Glacier Bay, then continues west into the colder and stranger regions of the Aleutians and the Arctic Circle. Along the way, he encounters dozens of unusual characters (and a couple of very hungry bears) and investigates how lessons learned in 1899 might relate to Alaska's current struggles in adapting to the pressures of a changing climate and world.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
May 15, 2018 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780525594345
- File size: 264997 KB
- Duration: 09:12:04
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Plug Mark Adams into your ears as he travels Alaska, retracing the steps of the Edward Harriman expedition in 1899. Adams is a genial, informative, and amusing guide, both as an author and a narrator. Harriman refitted a ship and took all his famous friends--John Muir, George Bird Grinnell, and Edward Curtis, just for starters--to explore the west coast of North America up to the Arctic Circle. Adams uses ferries and small planes, rides a bike with a bell in isolated areas where bears roam, hires a guide to kayak in Glacier Bay to keep safe from bears, and gets endlessly bitten by bugs. He is a city slicker, so his experiences of life in isolated areas are wryly funny, but he obviously likes people. Warming winters and disappearing glaciers are more serious observations. A.B. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
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