dispatches from the end of ice:
"Her omnivorous curiosity is fascinating."
― Elizabeth Dodd, author of In the Mind's Eye
“Following the trails Peterson maps, you don’t so much find your way to and from the northern latitudes as get lost in them along with her―lost in a way that makes you look around in wonderment, gratitude, and grief."
― Donovan Hohn, author of Moby Duck
Shortly after moving to a tiny village near Europe’s largest glacier, things in Beth Peterson’s life began to disappear. First there was the glacier—melting at a breakneck pace and taking plants and animals along with the ice—but then people she knew also began to vanish. A professor went missing while hiking a volcano in Japan; a friend wandered off a mountain trail they were hiking in Norway together; finally, Peterson fell into a crevasse herself while hiking. In an effort to make sense of all of these disappearances, Peterson went to libraries and museums and talked to historians, guides, and scientists; she traveled to Italy, England, France, Switzerland, and back to the States, visiting a cryonics institute, a wunderkammer, a philosopher’s cabin, and eventually, the furthest edge of the glacial ice. Part-lyric, part-personal essay, and part- research-reportage, the book ultimately considers not only the shifting ice, but also taxonomies of loss and the furthest limits of naming.