Boomer: Just as we were crossing the 80th parallel, passing from the High Arctic into the Polar latitudes, a white wolf spent a considerable amount of time with us in camp. You had a unique way of interpreting this experience. I’d like to know more about this perspective and your take on our intimate relationship with the natural landscape.
Turk: When I was five years old, my family moved from New York City to rural Connecticut. At a very early age, I remember venturing alone into the woods until I was scared that I would not find my way home. So I’ve been wander- ing around in natural environments for over 60 years. After enough time, the fear melts away and the spiritual connection with nature dominates.
Between 2000 and 2005, I embarked on five expeditions to
Vyvenka, a small Koryak village in northeast Siberia. I traveled with indigenous hunters and was guided on hallucinogenic and healing journeys by an old shaman, Moolynaut. The Koryak
people see nature as animate, alive and magical. Every animal, every rock, every blade of grass has soul and communicates with humans.
According to a scientific worldview, we would view the white wolf that slept only a few feet from our tent as a purely physical event. But the Koryak people would have interpreted it as a magical communication with the wolf spirit, the guard- ian of a passage into a new realm. There is no right or wrong. We can never ask the wolf what it was thinking or know its intentions. But I have found that life is so much more reward- ing and satisfying if we embrace the magic that I believe is flying around us all the time.
Turk: We were essentially trapped for 17 days in the Robeson Channel as winds and currents com- pressed the North Pole icepack into the narrow Nares Strait between Ellesmere and Greenland. During that time, we occasionally made forays onto moving ice. Sev- eral times, we found it necessary to jump across fields
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