Cold Oceans recounts Jon Turk's expeditions to some of the most inhospitable regions on earth. Even after being shipwrecked off Cape Horn, stopped by ice in the Northwest Passage, and beaten back by Arctic blizzards, Turk has followed an irresistible urge to explore. Woven throughout the book is the deepening relationship between Jon and his frequent expedition partner, Chris Seashore, and the journey of self-discovery that the relationship fostered.
Finalist, Banff Mountain Book Festival.
"Turk's chiseled but understated prose is a marked asset in light of the often outlandish material that comes his way." Washington Post Book World
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fold forming in my brain to store the morning’s sensations. Ions were racing through neurons connecting that fold to others, so that for the rest of my life, whenever someone mentioned words like waq1e, kayak, or Cape Horn, I could feel myseU surfing down one of the huge waves, hull hissing. Then I could feel the next wave lift me and roll past, unperturbed, on its endless journey around the earth. I started to paddle the last few hundred yards toward the beach. To experiment with my memory, I
and a handful of nuts between strokes. Finally we pulled into the bay, protected by a lowlying sand spit. The wind still howled, but there were no waves, no cliffs, no death behind us. We stepped out of the boat onto the spit. The waves broke on the windward side, sending spray into the air. Water collected on Chris’s face and dripped off her eyelids and nose. She slipped her arm around my wet slicker and we held each other. Even though we were tired, we decided not to camp here because the
was why he hadn’t seen any Northern Lights recently. Wouldn’t he allow them to take his meat? If not, the sky would be empty forever more. The hunter relented. “Please take what you want, ” he said to them. And several days later there were Northern Lights in the sky once more. Inuit legend, in A Kayak Full of 5hosts, Lawrence Millman We returned to Southern Cross, picked huckleberries, baked homemade bread in Chris’s wood cookstove, smeared it with fresh huckleberry jam, forgave each other for
assured us that we were welcome in the central Arctic, but kabloonas like us were wasting our time here when we could be hunting with the real Inuit on Baffin Island. I decided to fish all summer and make enough money to buy and train dogs during the fall and early winter. Then I planned to fly to Iqaluit on the southern coast of Baffin Island and sledge eight hundred fifty miles to Pond Inlet, our destination on the previous jour they. After the encounter at the border, I asked myself why I
away, across the broken ice, agilely jumping leads and ice ridges. I remained motionless, kneeling by the side of the kayak, with the half-sheathe gun in one hand and Chris in front of me. I slipped the gun back in the case and reclasped the buckles. Chris turned and walked over to me. “That was cute, ” I said. “And if you hadn’t scared the bear, you were right in my line of fire.” She answered that the bear wasn’t charging. Clearly it was run rung toward us, but in previous encounters bears
