ARCTIC PASSAGES: A Unique Small-Boat Journey Through...

ARCTIC PASSAGES: A Unique Small-Boat Journey Through the Great Northern Waterway by John Bockstoce (William Morrow: $11, illustrated). In this intriguing journal, anthropologist-outdoorsman John Bockstoce recounts the voyages he made between 1972 and 1989 around Alaska and northern Canada. For the first few years, he sailed a 32-foot umiak , a traditional Eskimo boat covered with walrus hide; he later switched to a more modern craft. These often harrowing journeys were not the damn-fool stunt of some idler trying to get into the Guinness Book. Bockstoce was researching the history of whaling and the fur trade, and the effect these activities had on Eskimo culture. Battling fog, ice, currents, tides and weather, he retraced the routes of early explorers and traders, surveying historic sites and observing the effects the recent boom-and-bust cycles of oil exploration have had on this niveous region. Writing with a depth of understanding ordinary adventure narratives lack, he offers insights into how the terrain and wildlife shaped the indigenous Arctic cultures, and how the influx of Western goods, diseases and vices ravaged those civilizations.