A thrilling odyssey through an unforgiving landscape, from « Canada’s greatest living explorer. »
In the spring of 2017, Adam Shoalts, bestselling author and adventurer, set off on an unprecedented journey alone across North America’s greatest wilderness – the arctic. A place where, in our increasingly interconnected, digital world, it’s still possible to wander for months without crossing a single road, or even seeing another human being.
Between his starting point in Eagle Plains, Yukon Territory, to his destination in Baker Lake, Nunavut, lies a maze of obstacles: shifting ice floes, swollen rivers, fog-bound lakes, and gale-force storms. Shoalts must time his departure by the breakup of the spring ice, then sprint across nearly 4,000 kilometers of rugged, punishing terrain to arrive before winter closes in.
He travels alone up raging rivers that only the most expert white-water canoeists dare travel even downstream. He must portage across fields of jagged rocks that stretch to the horizon, and navigate labyrinths of swamps, tormented by clouds of blackflies every step of the way. And the race against the calendar means that he cannot afford the luxuries of rest, or of making mistakes. Shoalts must trek tirelessly, well into the endless Arctic summer nights, at times not even pausing to eat.
But his rewards are beyond reckoning : the crystalline artic water that allows him to see far into the depths of pristine lakes, the company of curious wolves loping alongside his route, and the astonishing diversity the artic ecosystems, from ancient mountains to lush wetlands to the dunes of a northern desert.
Heart-stopping, wonder-filled, and attentive to the majesty of the natural world, Beyond the Trees captures the ache for adventure that afflicts us all.
