Last year I received a brochure for a "touring shell". This, evidently, is a rowing shell made out of a flat-bottomed canoe. As someone used to rowing a skinny racing shells back and forth on flat, short stretches of river, I had to laugh at this ungainly craft. But it invited escapist fantasies. That would be great for weekend camping, I thought.

This is essentially what Jill Fredston has done in her book, Rowing to Latitude: Journeys Along the Arctic's Edge - substituting "ocean rowing kayak" for touring shell. Actually, Fredston's excursions entail somewhat more than weekend camping. She and her husband rowed and paddled thousands of miles for months at a time through arctic seas. While even a nigh-competitive rower like me might do a twenty mile day now and then, the distances she traveled are stunning. In stages she went: from Seattle past Juneau; the length of the Yukon to Nome; the length of the Mackenzie and the entire northern coast of Alaska; around Spitzenberg; the coast of Norway, all of it; and a good chunk of the western coast of Greenland. Oh, yeah, and the entire coast of Labrador.

Her tales have what you'd hope for: winding rivers, rugged coast lines, icebergs, seals, bears. There are wonderful surprises, like a frozen whale stuck fifty feet above the tide line in a glacier, or smiling children intruding in two a.m. sunshine. There are arctic dangers, too, like the surge from a calving iceberg, or shifting winds leaving them icebound as summer ticks away. Fredston's love of the arctic is rich and sometimes beautiful. She describes finding walrus carcasses and trying to "restore some measure of dignity to the animals by placing long, smooth pieces of bleached driftwood" where their poached tusks had been. There is plenty of self-discovery, and much of the theme of Latitude revolves around Fredston's surprised love and interdependence with her husband. Almost lacking in this book is a man-vs.-nature flavor (so ubiquitous to most climbing literature). While there is plenty of adventure, Fredston is frank about the sense of frustration and tedium that comes with these trips (not to mention mosquitoes), and ends some of her journeys early.

Fredston's touch is usually deft, with more than a little self-deprecatory humor. (She describes learning to row in her childhood dinghy, "Ikky Kid".) She writes best when describing the arctic or her husband. Rowers will appreciate descriptions of moving over silky black waters, or the vertigo that accompanies moving through fog. Whether Fredston describes Doug's explaining to an earnest child that he is not Santa but Santa's brother, or his singing away fear while paddling stormy seas, we can't help feeling some of the wonder Fredston feels towards her husband. Now and then she strains similes and metaphors to good effect. For example, after swamping his kayak in rough surf, an angry Doug catches up to her looking "like a lion shaking foam from his mane". Why a lion would have foam in his mane is anyone's guess (shaving foam?), but what an image.

It's a tricky business, writing, and now and then Fredston tries too hard. The last chapters seem to be a warning lest we scout on this tale as some sort of encouragement for reckless acts. Here her cautions sound preachy, as do her occasional tangents into environmentalism. I'm sympathetic to her sentiments, but her strongest arguments for conservation come in her description of the northern seas.

In general, however, this is a tremendous book. I come away from reading Latitude wanting to know where Jill and Doug will go next - what's left? - and would they take me along? I wonder where I put that touring shell brochure....

Philip Johns teaches bright young students the intricacies of bug sex - with special emphasis on sexual cannibalism - in the wilds of Philadelphia. Other times he catches bugs, justifies spending too much time on the water, and avoids menacing looks from parents (including his own).

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