Tag Archives: Lawrence Millman

Ecologist Aldo Leopold defined wilderness as “an area that possesses no possibility of conveyance by mechanical means.”  Welcome to Mansel Island in Canada’s eastern Hudson Bay, where there are no cars, tundra buggies, ATVs, SUVs, motorcycles, or airplanes, all of which are mechanical conveyances. As my Inuit guide Jake and I explored this large, uninhabited chunk of limestone, I was …

This past spring I visited Whitehorse and a friend drove me to the Son of War Eagle Landfill a few miles outside of town. For local birders, this might as well have been Point Pelee, or even Brazil’s Pantanal. “Last year I saw two uncommon species for the Yukon here—a Brewer’s blackbird and an American pipit,” my friend told me. …

I first encountered the inspired writing of Lawrence Millman some 25 years ago, when I happened upon a somewhat battered copy of his now-classic Last Places in a used book store. I was instantly smitten. The book, which chronicles Millman’s journey across the North Atlantic from Norway to Newfoundland following ancient Viking sea routes was a revelation. At the time, …

The town of Moose Factory in northern Ontario has few obvious attractions for the visitor. You can drop in on the Cree Interpretation Centre and look at old artifacts; you can visit the Hudson’s Bay Company Museum, assuming it’s open; or you can experience the local horsefly, otherwise known as a bulldog. In the words of an early northern explorer, …