Back to the Barrens: On the Wing with da Vinci & Friends.

Back to the Barrens: On the Wing with da Vinci & Friends

By George Erickson

(Hancock House, 2007)

328 pp.; $18 *

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THOSE WHO have read George Erickson's bestseller True North: Exploring the Great Wilderness by Bush Plane will know what to expect from his sequel--another exciting adventure in the far north from an experienced bush pilot with an inquiring, freethinking mind.

Like True North, Erickson's latest is much more than a travel book. It's an adventure and wildlife-filled tale that extends from Minnesota to the Arctic Circle via the author's plane, the Tundra Cub.

Written in response to pleas for a sequel, Back to the Barrens offers a tour of both the outer terrain and of the author's inquiries and thought processes. The plight of the polar bears and the shrinking ice pack bring concerns of global warming to mind. While walking through caribou herds, Erickson describes the beliefs of the Inuit and Chipewyan natives whose lives depended on la Joule (the throng). When he visits an Inuit cultural center, he reflects respectfully on their religion and customs. The author takes pains to include a website and a toll-free phone number he finds posted all across Canada for the use of those who were abused in church-run schools (abuses so disturbing that eight natives committed suicide rather than accept a subpoena that would require them to detail the abuses). Always on the side of the natives, Erickson describes entire communities that were forced to relocate when the rising waters above newly built hydroelectric dams eroded the shorelines and washed a flood of mercury into their lakes, making fish inedible.

Erickson is a master of digression. His campfire prompts a tale about the discovery of phosphorus, the element that "enlivens" the tips of our matches. The night sky evokes myths from around the world about the Milky Way. Calculating distance leads to thoughts on the history of numbers. He knows about whales--from half-ton belugas to the big, blue giants with hearts as big as a Volkswagen Beetle and who we are pushing toward extinction. Black flies bring memories of Ernest Thompson Seton, the arctic explorer who pronounced his hatred for all flies, had no use for personal gods, and founded the precursor of the Boy Scouts, later "stolen" from him by Baden Powell.

Wondering what he'd do with a big pile of wishes, Erickson resurrects Leonardo da Vinci (who predicted that humans would fly) and takes him flying, then launches Newton on an "equal and opposite" ride on a space shuttle.

Back to the Barrens is infused with the author's personality and values, which are deeply humanistic. His appreciation of natural wonders, his passion for science and learning, and his disgust with stupidity and cruelty all come through in this superbly written book. Also included is a section containing some fifty full-color photographs, one of which Erickson describes capturing:

   Where the stream nears the lake, it tumbles down
   a four-foot cascade, spreading quivering bubbles
   across a yard-wide pool, coalescing into larger,
   multi-lobed spheres until they burst or are carried
   away to the lake. Standing spread-legged over the
   rafted bubbles like a small Colossus of Rhodes, I
   bend low for a closer look at the quivering, lens-like
   orbs, each one reflecting my image back to me.

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George Erickson is also the author of Time Traveling with Science and the Saints, a summary of nineteen centuries of Christian hostility to science, and is a former board member of the American Humanist Association.

* For ordering information, visit http://www.voyageurcountry.com/htmls/areawriters/GeorgeE.html or send $18.00 to George Erickson at 4678 Cedar Island Drive, Eveleth, MN 55734. Erickson donates all of his book profits to educational charities. Mention the AHA with your order and the profit will be donated to the organization.

Dennis Griebenow, a longtime member of Minnesota Humanists, has been published in Norway and the United States, and also publishes The Clermont NUZ, a newsletter of commentary on current events.