This Cold Heaven by Gretel Ehrlich

This was an interesting read, for a text that might be periodically referred to, as one would, to any 19^th century explorer’s text.

In that style, it is clearly an amateur scientific diary with the common trait, from a century ago, of being overly, almost didactically profuse in the descriptions, to the minutest detail and profundity.  The audience in mind is a fellow quasi-scientist/explorer captivated obsessively with a guide book to continued exploration of this fascinating country and peoples.  I have several such books in my library.

I would draw the line however, at this being a book of general interest to a broad community of adult library readers. 

The author has an amazing ability to capture scenes of nature {and culture} with wonderful simile and metaphor, such that the reader is left mesmerizingly drained with the beauty captured in her scenic words, and awed by her insight into the meaning of civilization’s encroachment into this stone-age culture. 

Unfortunately, the scenes and the insights are not enough to carry this book beyond a reference text book.  All too often, our book club selections are left to the extremely east coast PC white wine sippers{ecwwsps}, who in this case are sending the message, “You must empathize with these beleaguered Inuits and their disappearing land – read this book and then support their cause.”  Of course, the truth is that, for those having read the book {not the ecwwsps}, this is the way of the Earth – things may change, or be made to stay the same; doesn’t matter the world goes on – species go extinct by the dozens each year.

There is no lacking in Ehrlich’s passion for the subject matter, or her thorough recording of events, nor her wonderfully comprehensive historical recap of the last centuries (& more) events.  The problem is – she is not a mass media author, certainly not a fictional author, although, with her flights of fancy, she has possibilities there.  Alas, she violates so many “rules” of writing {aptly codified}, that her antiquated style quickly becomes droll, and encourages the reader to skip on forward to the next “activity”.

I am reminded of my next-door neighbor when she and I were in graduate school together in Tucson.  We had lengthy discussions about the plight of the western Indians.  I, of course, proposed monumental sieges, battles to the death: honorable; but with great loss of life.  She spoke of love and of oneness with nature – of nature’s ultimate victory over strife.  Our focal point in these discussions was the movie “Easy Rider”, 1969 - Dennis Hopper, Jack Nickolson, Peter Fonda.  What was the message you got from this movie.?