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COLD OCEANS, Reviews
Los Angeles Times
Tossed in the High Seas of Adventure;
By: MICHELLE WILLIAMS
Look at the charts. Among the bestsellers these days are books
about modern-day action and adventure. Think of them as the Grippers: "The Perfect
Storm," Sebastian Junger's gripping tale of a ferocious storm in the North Atlantic.
"Into Thin Air," Jon Krakauer's gripping story of a fateful climb up Mt.
Everest. "A Walk in the Woods," Bill Bryson's gripping (yet charming) account of
a walk along the Appalachian Trail.
Now meet Jon Turk. The title of his book kind of says it all:
"Cold Oceans: Adventures in Kayak, Rowboat, and Dogsled" (HarperCollins, 276
pages, $24). To prepare yourself properly for Turk, it is highly recommended that you
first read those other books, so you'll be well-versed on water, wind, trail mix, rain,
heavy rain, freezing rain, snow, blizzards, avalanches and wild critters.
When you first meet Turk trying to enlist his mountain climbing
buds to go kayaking with him around Cape Horn, and they say, "No way, Jack,"
you'll remember the daredevil mountain climbers in "Into Thin Air" and say,
"Dang, if climbers won't join him, then it must be dangerous."
As you read of Turk navigating Cape Horn in a little kayak,
you'll think of the poor doomed fishermen in "The Perfect Storm," who were in a
much bigger boat and still perished, and you'll wonder what Turk, an admitted kayaking
beginner, was thinking.
As Turk takes a bunch of sled doggies on a ride through
Arcticland, you'll be reminded of Bryson's dogless stroll along a 2,000-mile-plus path
that, by comparison, was a walk in the park.
Turk, whose accounts are painstakingly detailed, offers readers
lessons on the land. He knows his outdoors. He has thoroughly researched the history,
geography and science of the mean-as-rattlers waters and terrains of this book.
Cape Horn, in case you've forgotten your grade-school
geography, isn't Venice Beach. As Turk writes: "Three oceans, the Pacific, the
Atlantic, and the Antarctic, converge at Cape Horn; each one is ruled by a different
current. . . . Each current is driven by its own prevailing winds. Thus it's not only the
water that collides, but also the air above it."
I did mention the kayak part, right?
Turk goes further than his action-adventure counterparts and
explains the why: why he won't just settle down, get a job at the bank, buy a house in the
suburbs and become a golf addict. Heck, even surfing is tame to him, although one gets the
feeling that his idea of the perfect outing would be skiing down Mt. Everest on a
surfboard, right into those treacherous waves at Cape Horn.
He writes of the origins of his travels, some of which are
decades old, and he tells of the sometimes terrible toll his adventures have taken on his
family, on his relationships. He writes of how he finally finds a woman who understands
his need to roam. (That would be Chris "Kayak Woman" Seashore.)
The book even has a happy ending, with Turk and Chris traveling
successfully to Greenland in a kayak built for two.
By the time you finish reading "Cold Oceans," you'll
either believe that Turk should grow up and get a real job, or you'll ditch your real job
and head over to Kayaks R Us with your credit card and book passage to that place where
the Atlantic, Pacific and Antarctic converge.
Copyright (c) 1998 Times Mirror Company
KIRKUS REVIEWS, June 15, 1998
A chemist-turned-adventurer retraces the footsteps of Arctic explorers in some of the
harshest conditions the earth has to offer. Observing the tired, sallow faces of his older
scientific colleagues, Turk rejected a career in the lab for life on the land. His first
adventure, kayaking around Cape Horn in homage to Sir Francis Drake, ends 50 miles short
when he's shipwrecked and nearly killed. Next he and his girlfriend and eventual wife,
Chris, tackle the grueling Northwest Passage inside the Arctic Circle, where winter oceans
freeze from North America to Asia and summer thaws ice floes the size of Texas. They
attempted the trek (first completed by Roald Amundsen in 1906) by rowboat, alternately
dragging themselves across ice and rowing through open water. They fail, the relationship
suffers. Turk doesn't always or altogether enjoy his rugged travels. Still, he values them
as manifestations of the independent lifestyle he craves. "I am not at peace with
this adventure but I'm afraid of myself to abandon it." In fact, Turk's
soul-searching is dual. He examines his motivation for adventure travel (for which he
jettisons family life) and his inability to proceed wisely. Obsessively goal-oriented,
he's haunted by defeat. Faced with dangerous seas during the Cape voyage, he rashly pushed
on instead of waiting out the storm, then repeats his mistakes on subsequent trips. Just
when he seems ready to conquer his own foibles, he's saddled with a dangerously selfish
traveling partner on a dogsled trip across Canada's Baffin Island. When the man leaves him
stranded over night in the Arctic without food, water, or heat, and then quits without
explanation Turk must quit too. Finally, he and Chris successfully retrace the kayak
migration of an Inuit band from Canada to Greenland, largely because she convinces him
that discretion is the better part of valor. Genuine adventure and poignant
self-exploration too.
Galen Rowell, photographer and author
"Jon Turk clearly reaffirms his own personal integrity and his reader's faith in
the waning spirit of adventure. His realizations about his sea-level adventures touch
higher ground than the Mount Everest exploits recounted in Into Thin Air. A really great
book."
Gordon Grice, author of THE RED HOURGLASS: Lives of the Predators
"COLD OCEANS is a marvel: a fascinating adventure story, clearly and robustly
told, seasoned with science and history. The human relationships give Turk's story a
powerful emotional impact. And Turk's modesty is probably unique in the canon of
first-person adventure. An Excellent book."
Jonathan Waterman, author of The Quotable Climber and A Most Hostile Mountain
"COLD OCEANS is the rare book that comes to the heart of what makes men wander.
Jon Turk is a visionary adventurer who takes incredible risks and dares to fail grandly --
but that is not the point. In this honest and elegant story, enriched with leaping
porpoises, an animate landscape, and compassionate portraits of Inuit hunters, we have a
glimpse into our own souls: how both love and adventure can heal man, and for Jon Turk at
least, bring life full circle."
Anthony Brandt reviewing for The Men's Journal
Jon Turk thinks too much. An adventurer by trade, he feels compelled to risk life and
extremities in some of the world's most hostile places, leaving wives and children behind
to wonder whether Daddy is going to get himself back alive. Cold Oceans is Turk's true
tale of four of his many expeditions -- three of which he was unable to complete -- and of
his struggles with the larger sense of direction that informs his life. He presents
himself as obsessed with getting there, with succeeding, but he can't square this fixation
with his all-too vivid understanding that it is not the getting there that counts, it is
the being there, wherever "there" may be.
The first trip is a several-hundred-mile-long solo sea-kayak venture from the coast of
Chile through the Straits of Magellan to Cape Horn. Turk had never been in a sea kayak
before. He loses his craft, and very nearly his life, within sight of his destination.
Later, he tries to row with his girlfriend, Chris, from the mouth of the MacKenzie River
(which he has just run) east a couple of thousand miles along the northern shore of Canada
to Pond Inlet, on Baffin Island; besides close calls with grizzlies, their effort is
thwarted by sea ice that doesn't melt the way it's supposed to, by violent storms, and by
a seeming infinity of mosquitoes. After that, Turk attempts a midwinter dog-sled tour up
the east coast of Baffin Island with an unfriendly and, he believes, untrustworthy
companion. Finally, he kayaks with Chris --now his third wife-- from Ellesmere Island,
near Greenland to the American air-force base at Thule. This time, he makes it.
Turk is an excellent guide, we learn a great deal about the Inuit he encounters up
north, the explorers who have gone before, and about Jon Turk, who is confused but
likeable, an ordinary guy with extraordinary courage who is trying to come to grips with
his restlessness. We also learn enough about the landscapes he visits not to have to go
ourselves -- a relief, considering the strain that must accompany, say, a polar bear
charge, or an open-water trip in a kayak rapidly filling with ice floes, or some of the
other, intangible dangers with which Turk is confronted.
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