After I finished a book called Arctic Dreams, in 1986, I started to see more clearly the outline of a loosely related nonfiction project, a work I knew would take a good while to complete because, at the time, I lacked sufficient experience in the field to write it.
The initial research for this book was funded by the Guggenheim Foundation in 1987, under the title “The Shape of Time in Remote Regions,” and on five occasions by the National Science Foundation’s Antarctic Artists and Writers Program. I’m grateful to both institutions for their sponsorship. I also want to thank Richard Bangs of Mountain Travel Sobek for his early support in Africa; Polar Continental Shelf Program, Department of Energy, Mines and Resources Canada for their sponsorship on Skraeling Island; Bill Roberson at Inca Floats for his generosity in Galápagos; Ray Rodney at Wilderness Travel for support in Antarctica; Neil Keny-Guyer at Mercy Corps for their underwriting of travel in the Middle East and Central Asia; Matthew Swan at Adventure Canada for support in Greenland and the Queen Elizabeth Islands; Kasumasa Hirai for his hospitality and support in Japan; Hilary MacGillivray and Ivy O’Neal of Travel Dynamics for international travel; and Peter Shaindlin for his hospitality in Honolulu. I also want to thank Bobbie Bristol and Cheryl Young for offering me the Bernardine Kielty Scherman Residency Fellowship at the Macdowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire; Deb Ford for a residency fellowship at the Playa writers and artists colony at Summer Lake in central Oregon; and Michael Adams at the University of Texas at Austin, who awarded me the Dobie-Paisano International Residency Prize at a critical time in the final stages of work on Horizon. All three provided crucial space and time to write.
From the beginning I benefited from the unstinting support of Sonny Mehta, my publisher at Alfred A. Knopf. I started work on the book at Knopf with Elizabeth Sifton and, after her departure, continued to develop my ideas with Bobbie Bristol, with whom I published a collection of short stories, Field Notes: The Grace Note of the Canyon Wren, in 1994. When Ms. Bristol moved on from Knopf in 1997, I began work with Robin Desser, with whom I published a collection of essays, About This Life: Journeys on the Threshold of Memory, in 1998, and two short story collections, Light Action in the Caribbean, in 2000, and Resistance, in 2004. Robin’s patience with me during the years it took to research the book, to develop the perspective I believed it needed, and finally to actually write the book, was extraordinary. The intelligence and editorial acumen Robin brought to discussions of early drafts of the manuscript are only a part of the reason why she is regarded as legendary in American publishing. Working side by side with her was more than a pleasure. It defined for me what a collaborative effort with an editor should look like for a writer.
It’s unusual to be able to work with the same editor and publisher for so long, and I’m very grateful for the opportunity to have done so with Sonny Mehta and Robin Desser. I’ve also had the great fortune to work with Peter Matson, my agent of nearly forty years. His understanding of what I was trying to do as a writer always straightened out the road ahead for me, and his representation over the years has been impeccable.
This book is dedicated to Robin and Peter for their deep friendship and professional counsel over that time, but first to my wife, the writer Debra Gwartney. On many occasions, Debra set aside her own work to help me keep on schedule, particularly after my health began to fail in the final stages of writing.
The assertion that without Debra’s, Peter’s, and Robin’s support and advice this book would likely have gone no further than the stage of extensive note-taking is a sentiment easy to express but difficult to adequately underscore.
In addition to Polar Shelf, the Guggenheim Foundation, Mercy Corps, and the National Science Foundation, I want to thank Susan O’Connor for her financial support and her enduring friendship. Mags Webster at FORM in Western Australia, Richard Leakey in Africa, and Fatima Galani and her family in Afghanistan all helped greatly with logistics. My gratitude as well, on Ellesmere Island, to Peter Schledermann, Karen McCullough, Eric Damkjar, Eli Bornstein, and Hans Dommasch. Also to Robert McGhee. In Galápagos, gratitude to Steve Divine, Tui De Roy, Bill Roberson, Orlando Falco, Eugénio Moreno, the late Christine Gallardo, Jack Nelson, Bruce Barnett, and the late Karl Angermeyer. In northern Kenya, my thanks to Richard Leakey again, to Alan Walker, Kamoya Kimeu, Nzube Mutiwa, Onyango Abuje, Bernard Ngeneo, and Wambua Mangao. Also in Nairobi to the late Mary Leakey. In Australia, I’m grateful to Mark Tredennick, Petronella Morel, Pete Hay, Luke Davies, Mags Webster again, John Wolseley, Richard Brown, Bob Pidgeon, Peter Latz, Robyn Davidson, Annamaria Welden, Fred Myers, Loreen Samson, and to my Pitjantjatjara companions at Mutitjulu and my Warlpiri companions at Willowra for their accommodation. Gratitude as well to my other colleagues in the Pilbara, Paul Parin, Larry Mitchell, Bill Fox, and Carolyn Karnovsky. I also want to thank the organizers of the international literary festivals at Perth, Adelaide, Hobart, and Melbourne for providing transportation to Australia.
In Antarctica, I wish to express my indebtedness to Guy Guthridge, the late Jack Renirie, John Schutt, the late Peter Wilkniss, Paul Mayewski, Berry Lyons, Cameron Wake, Mark Twickler, Mike Morrison, Bruce Koci, Ted Clark, Diane McKnight, and Elle Tracy, and, at Graves Nunataks, to Ralph Harvey, Diane DiMassa, Nancy Chabot, Paul Benoit, and Scott Sanford. I also want to thank Captain Russell Bouziga for his friendship and instruction aboard the Nathaniel B. Palmer, members of his crew for their accommodation, and Skip Kennedy of the National Science Foundation, who introduced me to executives at Edison Chouest, the company that built the Palmer. Also in Antarctica, gratitude to my companions aboard the Hanseatic, the late Galen and Barbara Rowell, Will Steger, and my stepdaughter Amanda. And finally, thank you to my dive companions in Antarctica, Rikk Kvitek, Cathy Conlan, Diane Carney, Hunter Lenihan, Kim Keist, Brenda Konar, and John Oliver, all from Moss Landing Marine Labs in California. And Jeff Bozanic, the divemaster at McMurdo Base.
I want to thank John Beusterien for help in understanding the role of the perros de presa during the Spanish incursion in the New World, Dr. Noa Emmett Aluli in Hawai‘i for his guidance on Hawaiian history, Gregory Retallack for help identifying geological specimens, Desirée Fitzgibbon and Christine Wilson for their help with the Martin Bryant material, Stan Bettis for his help with the history of the Western Trader foray, and Cort Conley for alerting me to the existence of the Kølnæs site. My thanks also to Dennis Corrigan, the late Wally Herbert, and Dave Fross for their help at various points, and to my colleagues at Texas Tech University.
And gratitude to David Lindroth, for his wonderful maps, and to my colleagues in production at Knopf, Cassandra Pappas, Carol Carson, Rita Madrigal, and Andy Hughes. And to Annie Bishai.
My stepchildren, Amanda Woodruff, Stephanie Woodruff, Mary Woodruff, and Mollie Harger, have been a source of love, enthusiasm, and support throughout the process of researching and writing this book. I’m forever in debt to them.
In a project that unfolds across as many years as this one has, it is difficult to recall each moment in which the work was significantly inflected or illuminated by a conversation with someone. I would particularly like to thank, however, Neal Keny-Guyer, Don Walsh, Bill Roberson, Alan Walker, John Schutt, Jack Renirie, and Neill Archer Roan, the former director of the Bach Festival in Eugene, Oregon, who introduced me to Arvo Pärt. To the other people who provided interviews and support and should expect to see their names here, I apologize for the imprecision of my memory.
I would like to acknowledge the friends with whom I have tried over the years to work through my ideas about landscape and culture, and such things as the difference between autobiography and memoir. These would include, first, my wife, Debra, who, in addition to writing, also teaches memoir; the writers David Quammen, Pattiann Rogers, John Keeble, the late Conger “Tony” Beasley, Rebecca Solnit, Jane Hirshfield, W. S. Merwin, John Freeman, Colum McCann, the late Brian Doyle, Julia Martin in South Africa, and Mark Tredinnick in Australia; Marion Gilliam, Chip Blake, and others at The Orion Society; and a long list of artists whose working lives and artistic endeavors I have found inspiring. These would include the photographers Stuart Klipper, Susan Middleton, David Liittschwager, Lukas Feltzmann, Mary Peck, Ben Huff, Frans Lanting, and Linda Connor; the painters Alan Magee, Tom Pohrt, and the late Rick Bartow; the ceramic artist Richard Rowland; the sculptor Tom Joyce; the book artist Charles Hobson; the filmmaker Toby McLeod; the biographer Jim Warren; the curator Emily Neff; and the composer John Luther Adams. In addition, my brother John Brennan; my good friends Frank Stewart in Hawai‘i and Richard Nelson in Alaska for sterling conversation and excellent insights; translators Gary Witherspoon, Anton Fraga, Joe Moll, the late Luis Verano, and B. Mokaya Bosire; Bill Wade, formerly the president of Arco, Will Rogers at the Trust for Public Land, Richard Harvey, M.D., my colleague on a long, around-the-world plane trip, and, for his many years of guidance, the Onandaga elder Oren Lyons. Also Pualani Kanaka’ole Kanahele for the example of her life.
My former assistant Zoë Livelybrooks provided extraordinary help in all phases of preparation of the manuscript. I’m greatly in her debt, and to Candice Landau as well, who helped in the final stages. My former assistants Emma Hardesty, Julie Polhemus, and Nancy Novitski all supported the work in its early stages, and I thank them for their help. Julie, Nancy, Zoë, and I fact-checked the entire manuscript. Anything we might have missed is my responsibility. Special thanks to Isabel Stirling for help with research.
In addition to these, my deep bow of respect to Davide Sapienza in Italy, Alberto Manguel in Argentina, Hans Jurgen Balmes in Germany, and Anne Collins in Canada. And profound gratitude to Julie Graff, M.D.; John Stacey, Ph.D.; Pam Schmid, R.N.; the Comanche/Chiricahua Apache healer Harry Mithlo; and my brother John Brennan, a traditional healer, for their ministrations and counsel.
Finally, the late Robley Wilson at The North American Review, Lewis Lapham at Harper’s, Chip Blake at Orion, Stephen Covey at The Georgia Review, Sigrid Rausing at Granta, and Joël Garreau at The Washington Post, who published my early thoughts about Galápagos and Antarctica, and about traveling with indigenous people.
Steve Frost, Mark Tredinnick, and Guy Guthridge read critically, respectively, the chapters on Africa, Australia, and Antarctica. David Quammen also provided help with the chapters on Galápagos and Africa. I’m grateful to them all for the corrections and improvements they offered. Whatever mistakes or inaccuracies remain in the book are my responsibility.