Waltzing with your aunt

‘It’s not what’s here — it’s what’s not here’ is the reason given by a voluntary exile in the Alaskan wilderness to the author’s question.

‘It’s not what’s here — it’s what’s not here’ is the reason given by a voluntary exile in the Alaskan wilderness to the author’s question. ‘What keeps you here?’ Space, lack of people, freedom, and personal indepen- dence compensate some for the cold, isolation and loneliness.

Starting in Chukotka, in easternmost Siberia, Sara Wheeler moves via Alaska to the Canadian far north, Greenland, the islands of Svalbad north of Norway, Lapland and eventually Solovki Island in the White Sea, home to an Orthodox monastery converted into a Bolshevik concentration camp by Lenin. These are journeys round the Arctic Circle, then, made in jumps, and separated by many years. In 1996 Wheeler published Terra Incognita on her travels to the scientific stations of the Antarctic: that book was received with justified plaudits. Those expecting a sequel might have predicted a polar balancing act up north — but this is a very different project. Part of the charm of her Antarctic adventures was the teasing, flirtatious relationships she developed with the ‘beards’, as she called them, the young, gauche US and British scientists overwintering in temperatures down to minus 55 C. Then single, in her mid-thirties, with no children, Wheeler managed to make these unpromising characters come alive and even imbued their juvenile antics with a sort of clottish heroism.

Now, 13 years later, Wheeler has two children, Reg and Wilf, both of whom accompany her on parts of these journeys. The flirty, jokey singleton, up for a laugh and full of vulgar jokes, as well as a genuine interest in hard science, has vanished, replaced by a serious middle-aged mum flying hither and yon commissioned to write travel pieces for the London papers.