Former Almonte resident Jennifer Kingsley has just published a book based on her northern wilderness paddling trip. Her publisher Greystone Books sent out the following press release.
A voyage of self-discovery and renewal across one of the planet’s wildest and most rugged landscapes
In the growing canon of lyricial exploration literature, Paddlenorth tells the riveting story of Jennifer Kingsley’s 54-day paddling adventure on the Back River in the northern wilderness of the Arctic as she and her five companions battle raging winds, impenetrable sea ice, treacherous rapids, and agonizing physcial endurance while contending with rising tensions among the group. But they also experience the lasting joy of grizzly sightings, icy swims, and the caribou’s summer migration.
Woven through this narrative are often-harrowing accounts of the journeys of earlier explorers, some of whom never made it back home. Paddlenorth paints an indelible portrait of the spectacular Arctic landscape, rendered with a naturalist’s eye and an artist’s sensibility, and offers an eloquent exploration of belonging, the nature of friendship, and how wilderness changes us.
Jennifer Kingsley has traveled for hundreds of days through some of the planet’s last great wildernesses. She has worked as a guide, naturalist, and conservationist for more than a decade and has paddled remote rivers in Nunavut, watched polar bears in Greenland, tracked grizzlies in B.C.’s coastal rainforest, and sailed the North Pacific and Atlantic.
Kingsley has a degree in biology and her writing has been published in magazines, journals, and newspapers, and her radio stories have been featured nationally and internationally. Her documentary The Whale’s Choice was a top pick of 2013 by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
“Kingsley goes in search of a place where she feels ‘both small and strong,’ and comes back with a fast-paced story of risk, reward and raw emotion. For fans of adventure literature, here is a wilder Wild.”
– J.B. MacKinnon, author of The Once and Future World
