Tip of the Iceberg

Plug Mark Adams into your ears as he travels Alaska, retracing the steps of the Edward Harriman expedition in 1899. Adams is a genial, informative, and amusing guide, both as an author and a narrator. Harriman refitted a ship and took all his famous friends--John Muir, George Bird Grinnell, and Edward Curtis, just for starters--to explore the west coast of North America up to the Arctic Circle. Adams uses ferries and small planes, rides a bike with a bell in isolated areas where bears roam, hires a guide to kayak in Glacier Bay to keep safe from bears, and gets endlessly bitten by bugs. He is a city slicker, so his experiences of life in isolated areas are wryly funny, but he obviously likes people. Warming winters and disappearing glaciers are more serious observations. A.B. � AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine