Jill Fredston has traveled more than twenty thousand miles of the Arctic and sub-Arctic-backwards. With her ocean-going rowing shell and her husband, Doug Fesler, in a small boat of his own, she has disappeared every summer for years, exploring the rugged shorelines of Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Spitsbergen, and Norway. Carrying what they need to be self-sufficient, the two of them have battled mountainous seas and hurricane-force winds, dragged their boats across jumbles of ice, fended off grizzlies and polar bears, been serenaded by humpback whales and scrutinized by puffins, and reveled in moments of calm.

“To bring the object outside into clearer view, we had to start within, scraping a hole in the frost with our fingernails. This book begins much the same way.”

Jill Fredston “Rowing to Latitude: Journeys Along the Arctic’s Edge”. Published by North Point Press in 2001. Donated to the library by Tom Hitchins from USA ❤️

Photos by Anna Iltnere / Sea Library