Navigating Life: The Sun Is a Compass

The Sun is a Compass: A 4,000-Mile Journey into the Alaskan Wilds 
by Caroline Van Hemert

Caroline Van Hemert is a scientist and adventurer. As she finished her doctoral dissertation, she and her husband planned a journey through the Alaskan wilderness. As she traveled, she hoped to rediscover her love of the natural world that first lured her into science and to envision the life she and her husband would create for themselves at this time of transition.

Seeing a gray-headed chickadee is special not because its feathers shimmer with iridescence of because it has just arrived from Polynesia but because almost nothing is known about these tiny birds. If I hadn't been paying attention, if I hadn't tuned my ears to the patter of wings and the echo of silence, I would have missed it entirely. (p. 14)

Dr. Van Hemert mentioned studying writing before beginning her biology graduate work, and her words are often thrilling and enthralling. She writes of her first introduction to fieldwork in Alaska.

They flew so close to one another that, for a moment, I couldn't see the sky above me. As they came directly overhead, I ducked. When I looked up again, the palette of colors--white wings against blue sky, ray rock against green water--left me gasping for breath. (p. 26)

Though her parents had spent years sending their children outside, camping, skiing, and exploring their home state of Alaska, her field work transformed her attitude.

For the first time, I saw the natural world not through textbooks but through my own eyes. I began to understand how ecological questions I'd learned about in school were embedded in the muddy, messy realities of fieldwork, and I loved it. (p. 27)

Cue poetic knowledge, though most of us probably don't imagine tents, camp stoves, rain, snow, and lots of guano when we think of the term. A recurring theme in the book is the contrast between fieldwork and laboratory work in modern science. Time in the laboratory is the norm for scientists, but Dr. Van Hemert obviously has fallen in love with the natural world, not with the laboratory. She writes of the early naturalist and indigenous people who learned to observe the natural world, that by watching and listening, they were able to learn about the seasons, plants, animals, and birds. Today's scientist, however, uses more equipment and laboratory tests than observation to advance knowledge.

Science has gone the way of most other things in our digital world. High-tech, computer-centric, and data-hungry. As a result, we know much more than we used to. But we also spend much less time as observers. Wandering through the woods with only a backpack, a notebook, and a pair of binoculars has become a novelty, rather than a necessity, for many biologists. (pp. 125-126) 

This book reminded me of the generous gift we provide in nature study, the habit of walking through the natural world and paying attention to it. Dr. Van Hemert fell in love with birds and being outside with them. Her love of them led to advanced study in biology, because she wanted to understand and protect them, but that very study pulled her away from time immersed in their wild world. It's a tension every biologist and naturalist will recognize.

We tend to think the days of crossing the arctic on skis are over, but they're not! Few make the attempt, and it's no less difficult than in early days of exploring.

In this transition zone, where spring is nudging out winter, there is no perfect way to travel--too much snow for hiking and too little for skiing. The river flows through a narrow slot canyon choked with ice, making paddling impossible. We clamber over logs and across fields of pine needles and crispy brown ferns, skis dangling from our feet like useless appendages. Sweating and straining, we cover less than a mile in two hours.

If you're traveling by ski and boat, you run many great risks, even with air-dropped supplies. More than once, they escape real danger or barely avoid starvation. There are many times they escape death through quick action or luck. The water, the mountains, the bears, the hunger...they all present very real dangers.

As a mother with daughters, I paid close attention to Dr. Van Hemert's conversations with herself about the possibility of having children. A baby would limit their freedom to explore, but her sister and others reveal some of the great joys of children.

If parenthood inspires the sort of bond I feel with them [her parents] right now, even from a distance, maybe my sister is right. Maybe having a child matters more than battling brush and postholing through last season's snow. Maybe family trumps wilderness. Or perhaps these pieces--made of illness and love and birth and death--are inextricably linked, tangled and messy like the green stalks of alder that grow on every hillside. (p. 155)

The book itself doesn't give a final answer except in the epilogue, which describes their first backpacking trip with a ten week old son. It's different, but enchanting.

I knew a baby would change our lives. What I hadn't realized is that this doesn't mean we must let go of what we love. Only now do I see that my worries about losing myself, or us, or our desire for adventure, were misplaced...We will continue to navigate by the only means we know: one stroke, one footfall, one moment at a time. (p. 293)

If you're interested in dangerous adventures like hiking through the Arctic, this book will give you an excellent idea of what that will be like, and perhaps some tips on the planning and preparation. If you know me in real life, you know this is far more ambitious than anything I'd even consider. It doesn't sound fun or worthwhile in the least. But I love reading about adventures like this one. I'm completely content to live vicariously through Caroline Van Hemert and others who share their tales in books I can drink while sipping tea at my kitchen table.

This book is about a crazy journey through Alaskan wilderness, but it is also about finding wonder in the natural world, balancing self and others, and learning how to make a life as a family.

I will include this in our list of possible high school North American geography books. It's definitely best for a more mature reader as the author writes about traveling and living with her husband before they were married, even as the author asks herself what their future as a couple will be. She also occasionally mentions times when they are intimate. These instances are sometimes a little more descriptive than I may prefer for my teenagers, but there's nothing explicit.

I have received nothing in exchange for this post. Links to Amazon and Bookshop are affiliate links. I checked this book out from our library.