A Wilder Time
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isotope: Two or more forms of a specific chemical element in which the nuclei contain the same number of protons but different numbers of neutrons. Some isotopes are stable, while others are unstable and radioactively decay to other elements.
lee: The downwind side of a sailing vessel or that portion of a shoreline, landmass, or object that is protected from wind, as opposed to the windward side which is directly confronted by the wind.
lithic: Composed of stone
orthopyroxene: A mineral that forms at high temperatures in certain igneous and metamorphic rocks. It is mainly composed of iron, magnesium and silicon.
palsa: A geological term for a rounded mound of soil a few feet across rising out of a moist or watery region. The form of the mound is determined by a frozen ice core several to tens of feet below the surface of the palsa.
pingo: A geological term for a large version of a palsa, sometimes reaching hundreds of feet in diameter.
protolith: The precursor rock from which later rocks formed through metamorphosis. Often, being able to identify a protolith is a powerful way to reconstruct an earlier environment or setting.
relict: A feature, artifact, or form that has survived from some earlier time.
schist: A metamorphic rock with paper-thin laminations and layers formed by platy or elongate minerals.
sillimanite: A white metamorphic mineral that tends to occur in elongate, needlelike forms. Its presence usually signifies that clays or other aluminum-rich materials were present in the rocks that were metamorphosed.
stope, stoping: A process in which overlying materials are detached and engulfed by an upwardly rising magma body. The term is usually used in the mining industry when overlying material in a mine is removed, but it has also been applied to processes involving the movement of molten rock (magma) up through the crust.
subduction: The process in which one tectonic plate descends beneath another.
tectonic plate: An expanse of crust and upper mantle that slowly migrates over the Earth’s surface. There are eight major tectonic plates and numerous smaller plates on the Earth’s surface. The individual plates are relatively rigid and it is for this reason that mountain systems form when plates collide with each other.
tundra: A cold, treeless region that occurs at high latitudes or elevations. The growing season is short. The combination of weather conditions results in a unique biome of plants.
twin: A crystal structure in which the orientation of the lattice of atoms composing a crystal is oriented in a way that is different from that of adjacent parts of the crystal.
ultramafic: A rock type that is rich in iron and magnesium and low in silica, aluminum, sodium, and potassium. Ultramafic rocks make up the bulk of Earth’s volume, occurring as the predominate rock type in the mantle.
Acknowledgments
ATTENTION TO WILDERNESS HAS BEEN VOICED for centuries, the literature rich with diverse visions and personal experiences, each grounded differently. Thank you to a few of those who have exposed the necessity of reflection on wilderness and being, and who inspired humility in the process, in no particular order and woefully incomplete:
Loren Eiseley—The Immense Journey (1957)
Ilya Prigogne—From Being to Becoming (1980)
Freeman Dyson—Disturbing the Universe (1979)
Henry David Thoreau—Walden (1854)
John Muir—The Mountains of California (1875), My First Summer in the Sierra (1911), and The Yosemite (1912)
Aldo Leopold—A Sand County Almanac (1949)
Edward Abbey—Desert Solitaire (1968), and The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975)
Robert MacFarlane—The Wild Places (2007)
Margaret Mead—Coming of Age in Samoa (1928)
Rachel Carson—Silent Spring (1962)
Gontran de Poncins—Kabloona: Among the Inuit (1941)
Peter Matthiesen—The Snow Leopard (1978)
Gary Snyder—Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems (1959), Turtle Island (1974), and The Practice of the Wild (1990)
Barry Lopez—Arctic Dreams (1986)
Rockwell Kent—The first to paint Greenland for a Western audience
Wallace Stegner—Angle of Repose (1971)
John Steinbeck—The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1951)
Henry Beston—The Outermost House (1928)
E. O. Wilson—Consilience (1998)
Annie Dillard—Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974) and Teaching a Stone to Talk (1982)
Gretel Ehrlich—The Solace of Open Spaces (1985), Islands, the Universe, Home (1991), and This Cold Heaven (2001)
Elsa Marley—Blue Ice Series (2009) and other magnificent paintings.
Terry Tempest Williams—Refuge (1992), When Women Were Birds (2012), and The Hour of Land (2016)
Thank you to Kai and John, who began the Greenland adventure, invited me to be part of it with them so many years ago, and sustained the passion for life and place that allowed Team Alpha to materialize. Their enthusiasm, heart, and honesty have served us and the science they practice, well. To the people of Greenland, who have sustained a culture that deeply and intimately acknowledges and respects the wonder and power of the wild world within which they thrive. Their struggle to persist in spite of the pressures imposed on them from external forces should inspire each of us to be more than what we have chosen to be. To Lucia Milburn, Peter Seitel, and John Winter for companionship in the field during my first expedition.
Deep appreciation to Katharine Turok, whose thorough, insightful and sensitive editorial reviews transformed a manuscript into a book. Her patience and grace in walking a naïf through a small portion of the vast landscape of writing has been boundless. Thank you to Dawn Raffel, who provided guidance that nurtured the book and helped it grow. To Erika Goldman, whose patient and tireless editorial efforts took it to maturity, I am forever grateful. To Carol Edwards, thank you for an extraordinary effort at clarifying and refining the intent of the text. Thank you to my agent, Malaga Baldi, who persevered and encouraged, finding a home for this work. And, thank you to Elana Rosenthal and Molly Mikolowski, for their dedicated attention and perceptive vision.
To Carolyn Feakes, I offer my deepest heartfelt gratitude for boundless patience as, day after day, she put up with the endless effort to find what needed to be said. To Sabina Thomas, Martha Hickman Hild, Annemarie Meike, Lucia Milburn and Dirk Sigler for their generous offerings of time and insight and commenting over the years on various versions of this evolving book. Thank you to Lawrence Millman, for providing mycological insight. And thank you to the faculty and students at College of the Atlantic, Bar Harbor, Maine, for rich engagement in discussions about wilderness and its values.
Funding for the research we have conducted in Greenland over the years has been provided at various times by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Danish Research Council, the Greenland Geological Survey (GGU) and the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS). The support of these organizations is gratefully acknowledged.
Quotation Source Notes
Page
9Katherine Larson, “Solarium,” Radial Symmetry (Yale University Press, 2011).
Alan Watts, Cloud-Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown: A Mountain Journal (Vintage Books, 1974).
31George Bancroft, The Necessity, the Reality, and the Promise of the Progress of the Human Race: Oration Delivered Before the New York Historical Society, November 20, 1854 (New York, 1854).
33John Steinbeck, The Log from the Sea of Cortez (Penguin Classics, 1951).
105Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams (Scribner, 1986).
107John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra (Houghton Mifflin, 1911).
147Alfred Lord Tennyson, Canto 123, In Memoriam A.H.H. (London, 1850).
149Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk (HarperCollins, 1982).
197Loren Eiseley, The Immense Journey: An Imaginative Naturalist Explores the Mysteries of Man and Nature (Random House, 1957)
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