Bruno D. (BrunoMassage) reviewed North to the Night: A Spiritual Odyssey in the Arctic on + 131 more book reviews
In June 1994 Alvah Simon and his wife, Diana, set off in their 36-foot sailboat to explore the hauntingly beautiful world of icebergs, tundra, and fjords lying high above the Arctic Circle. Four months later, unexpected events would trap Simon alone on his boat, frozen in ice 100 miles from the nearest settlement, with the long polar night stretching into darness for months to come. With his world circumscribed by screaming blizzards and marauding polar bears and his only companion a kitten named Halifax, Simon withstands months of crushing loneliness, sudden blindness, and private demons. Trapped in a boat buried beneath the drifting snow, he struggles through the perpetual darkness toward a spiritual awakening and an understanding of the forces that conspired to bring him there. He emerges 5 months later a transformed man. Simon's powerful, triumphant story combines the suspense of "Into Thin Air" with crystalline, lyrical prose to explore the hypnotic draw of one of earth's deepest ast dangerous wildernesses.
Riveting. I cannot imagine setting out to do what Alvah Simon and his wife did. I'm not a sailor and don't own a boat but this account of a crazy attempt to winter in a sailboat in the arctic made me want to attempt similar adventures.
