Describes one couple's journey around the Arctic Circle by sailboat Following his "Arctic dreams" that began with a photograph of the haggard crew of the ill-fated ship Endurance , Alvah Simon and his wife, Diana, set sail to winter in the high north. "We call them explorers, but I knew that look in their eyes," Simon writes of the early Arctic adventurers. "They were seekers, and that is a different thing." With self-discovery as a deeper agenda, the couple ventures into Tay Bay of remote Bylot Island; it is their ultima Thule--"the Last Unknown." Their small boat is willingly frozen in the ice. When Diana is airlifted out of the Arctic to tend to an emergency back home, Simon is unexpectedly left in solitude. His journey turns inward as he confronts the "uncomfortable awakening of my spiritual self." In the waning daylight, then total darkness, Simon's days are punctuated by depression and mania, a crackled voice over the radio, Inuit visitors, and hard-earned lessons as he is driven by the forces of the Arctic winter and by "the total loss of the sun." In this elegant, well-paced book, the Arctic darkness becomes a psychological landscape perforated with light and revelation, and Simon's thrilling tale is as captivating as his language. There is a welcome intimacy here as we share the same icy hull, listening close to this searching man. Simon courageously tells us about his darkest moments, dreams, and nightmares, and when the sun emerges, new eyes greet land and relationships. Simon has discovered his ultima Thule. --Byron Ricks With no winter daylight and temperatures as low as 60 degrees below zero, Bylot Island in Canada's Northwest Territories, across Baffin Bay from northern Greenland, seems an unlikely place to spend the winter, especially alone in a small boat frozen in the ice. Simon, a wandering American with many nautical miles behind him, and his wife, Diana, a well-traveled New Zealander, planned to share the experience. But when her father's illness called Diana home, Simon stayed on alone with only a cat and occasional curious wildlife for companionship. Reading about so much darkness and ice and the hardship and introspection brought about by them sounds grueling, but Simon can write. When not sharing his inner reflections, he provides interesting observations about the Inuits of the region. The experience, combined with Simon's fine narrative, makes this book a good choice for larger public library travel collections.?Harold M. Otness, Southern Oregon Univ. Lib., Ashland Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. Taking leave of humanity, Simon purposely wintered in the Canadian Arctic in 1994^-95. His abode was unusual: a sailboat. He and his wife sailed to Bylot Island, intent on encountering the life of the Inuit and the wildlife of their land. Simon fills his account with conversations with visitors to his boat and observations of polar bears; but such apparitions from the perpetual northern night are brief reliefs from his month-long isolation during the deepest period of winter. When his wife is evacuated to attend her sick father, Simon describes his mental state, telling of Arctic explorers who've gone crazy and expounding on humanity and the environment. After the latter declamations, the reader is as anxious for the ice break-up as Simon is. In the spring, though, his wife returns and so does activity: she nearly drowns, their boat nearly sinks, and then it narrowly escapes entrapment in packed ice. A capably told tale of coping with cold, supported by 50 photos of Simon's campsite. Gilbert Taylor into place north of the Arctic Circle. It may or may not be coincidence that the most popular explorer/adventure books in recent years have taken place at high altitude (Everest) or low latitude (Alaska). A long-time adventure sailor, Simon is a veteran of expeditions in the Southern Hemisphere, including treks into Borneo. But it was the romance of the Arctic that called him for what was to be his and his wife Diana's last major exploration. It took them nearly two years to prepare, including finding the 36-foot steel boat that was to be their home and anchoring for a winter in Maine to practice cold-weather survival. Come spring, they set out for Baffin Bay in search of a cove sufficiently protected to keep their mission from being suicidal, and sufficiently remote to satisfy Alvah's hunger for quest. They barely made safe harbor before the ice began to close in. Soon after, Diana was flown out to New Zealand to be with her terminally ill father. With emergency service shut down for the winter and 24 hours of darkness setting in, Alvah was isolated with their cat, Halifax. His months alone evolved into a spiritual search that changed his life. He also endured extraordinary mechanical challenges that included temporary blindness from carbon monoxide. So transformed was he by his months alone in darkness and cold that when Diana finally returned, he was slow to accept her pres