Ice Walker
A Polar Bear's Journey through the Fragile Arctic
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Ice Walker
Narrated by:
Aven Shore
Buy Now for £7.99
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Narrated by:
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Aven Shore
About this listen
Nanurjuk, “the bear-spirited one,” is hunting for seals on Hudson Bay, where ice never lasts more than one season. For her and her young, everything is in flux.
From the top of the world, Hudson Bay looks like an enormous paw print on the torso of the continent, and through a vast network of lakes and rivers, this bay connects to oceans across the globe. Here, at the heart of everything, walks Nanurjuk, or Nanu, one polar bear among the six thousand that traverse the 1.23 million square kilometers of ice and snow covering the bay.
For millennia, Nanu’s ancestors have roamed this great expanse, living, evolving, and surviving alongside human beings in one of the most challenging and unforgiving habitats on earth. But that world is changing. In the Arctic’s lands and waters, oil has been extracted—and spilled. As global temperatures have risen, the sea ice that Nanu and her young need to hunt seal and fish has melted, forcing them to wait on land where the delicate balance between them and their two-legged neighbors has now shifted.
This is the icescape that author and geographer James Raffan invites us to inhabit in Ice Walker. In precise and provocative prose, he brings readers inside Nanu’s world as she treks uncertainly around the heart of Hudson Bay, searching for nourishment for the children that grow inside her. She stops at nothing to protect her cubs from the dangers she can see—other bears, wolves, whales, human beings—and those she cannot.
By focusing his lens on this bear family, Raffan closes the gap between humans and bears, showing us how, like the water of the Hudson Bay, our existence—and our future—is tied to Nanu’s. He asks us to consider what might be done about this fragile world before it is gone for good. Masterful, vivid, and haunting, Ice Walker is an utterly unique piece of creative nonfiction and a deeply affecting call to action.
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Critic reviews
A Globe and Mail Top 100 Book of 2020
A 49th Shelf Most Anticipated Book
A 49th Shelf Most Anticipated Book
“I have never felt as intimate with another animal as I have with Raffan’s polar bear, Nanu. Raffan evokes her world—on land and ice, hunting, hibernating, giving birth, and raising cubs—with a sensory vocabulary that combines science and poetry to powerful effect. In so doing, Raffan initiates us into ‘bearness,’ putting us, not just inside Nanu’s den but, almost literally, under her skin, where we become deeply invested in her life and fate, which is unavoidably linked to our own.”
— JOHN VAILLANT, bestselling author of The Golden Spruce and The Tiger
— JOHN VAILLANT, bestselling author of The Golden Spruce and The Tiger
“An evocative and sensory trip through the Arctic, Ice Walker captures the beauty, the danger, and the expanse of the northern icescape while calling us to action to save the polar bear, the world it inhabits, and all they represent. This is a timely book about the power of a mother’s love that transcends species. Nanu’s story will live in my imagination for a long time.”
— PAUL NICKLEN, award-winning National Geographic photographer and author of Born to Ice
— PAUL NICKLEN, award-winning National Geographic photographer and author of Born to Ice
“Raffan plunges readers into Hudson Bay and the world of Nanu, a female polar bear, spinning a stunning tale around this massive creature and the world she inhabits. The ice is as much a character in the story as the bears, and Raffan extols the wonders of this land, and what its loss will mean for Canadians and the world.”
— The Globe and Mail
— The Globe and Mail
“Just as a polar bear slips between worlds, from solid ground to sea ice and back again, James Raffan moves effortlessly between the tangible and the imaginative in this strikingly evocative, scientifically rigorous exploration of ‘bearness.’ In journeying vicariously with a female polar bear through a world of flux, we see that no one and nothing exists in isolation, especially in the far north. Failing to recognize this reality more broadly will only accelerate our undoing. Ice Walker, then, is an act of defiance and hope. This is nature writing at its most intimate, compassionate, and exhilarating pitch.”
— KATE HARRIS, award-winning and bestselling author of Land of Lost Borders
— KATE HARRIS, award-winning and bestselling author of Land of Lost Borders
“Raffan educates and fascinates readers, lending an intimacy as we journey along with [the bear]. . . . Raffan describes scenes in a beautiful, captivating, and, at times, heartbreaking fashion, pondering how human life affects the bears and, by extension, all of existence. . . . Fans of John Vaillant’s The Golden Spruce will be equally enthralled by this.”
— Booklist (Starred)
— Booklist (Starred)
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