Tim Irvin and I have spent a lot of time around bears. We have been lucky enough to watch Spirit Bears, the rare white black bear that lives mostly on the central coast of British Columbia. My experiences live mostly in my memory and sometimes in my writing, so thank goodness for Tim. He’s been recording these encounters with this camera. The results speak for themselves.
Cougar Creek in Canmore looked wild and exciting on the evening of Wednesday, June 19. My partner Toby and I were staying with Toby’s brother whose house backs directly on to the creek, and we went for a stroll before bed. The fire department was starting to put up caution tape, and the bank was abuzz with walkers and joggers. Almost everyone wielded a camera.
By 5:30 a.m. on Thursday, the story had entirely changed. As the fire department pounded on doors up and down the street, we heard our names.
“Toby! Jenny! We’ve got to get out.” . . .
Four million people live above the Arctic Circle and many more make up the world’s northern cultures.
For those of us who are travelers, visitors or guests, going north may feel like a trip into the unknown. Perhaps you are wondering how to prepare for life way up there. I asked Richard van Camp.
I’m writing for the Centre for Nanoscience and Quantum Information in Bristol, UK this week, which means I’m learning some quantum physics. The most excellent surprise of the day was coming across Professor Sandu Popescu from the University of Bristol in an on-line video. He studies “the most fundamental aspects of quantum physics,” and aside from explaining some of the basic stuff I needed to know, he left me with a precious gem of inspiration.
It’s been three years since I defended my master’s in creative non-fiction writing at the University of Victoria, and since then I’ve done a lot more thinking about wilderness – about how it is both a real place and a construction, how it has its own essence regardless of where we find it. So on this three year anniversary of my defense, as my manuscript makes the round of publishers, I wanted to share Sherwin Arnott’s analysis of my work, from 2010.
Greystone Books is thrilled to announce that Jennifer Kingsley has been awarded the 2015 National Outdoor Book Award (NOBA) for Outdoor Literature in Non-Fiction for her first book, Paddlenorth: Adventure, Resilience, and Renewal in the Arctic Wild.
