‘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.
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