Jon Waterman’s book, ‘Into the Thaw,’ documents the impact of climate change on the Arctic.

When Jon Waterman made his first of many forays into the Arctic more than four decades ago, he saw massive herds of caribou, vast expanses of sea ice, and a hypnotic, glowing light he couldn’t forget.

Drawn by the remoteness of the place and the people who lived there, he headed north dozens of times, exploring large swathes of the Arctic. But what he saw recently at the site of the first trip shocked him. The former-ranger-turned-writer recounts that most recent expedition, along with some of his earlier trips, in his latest book, “Into the Thaw: Witnessing Wonder Amid the Arctic Climate Crisis (Patagonia, $35).”

Waterman and professional kayaker and photographer Chris Korbulic traveled more than 500 miles by foot and raft down the Noatak River and along the shore of the Chukchi Sea in 2022 to document the greening of the Arctic for the book. (You may recognize Korbulic’s name – he was paddling a river in the Congo in 2010 when his guide, Hendri Coetzee, was killed by a huge crocodile.) They saw melting permafrost, far less ice, encroaching brush and eroding shorelines.

Into the Thaw

The Arctic is warming four times faster than the rest of the planet, and Waterman compares the melting permafrost to frozen spinach left out on the kitchen counter – soggy, mushy and unpleasant to walk on. Fires are more common, floods are more frequent, and warmer temperatures are allowing plants and animals that once couldn’t survive in the frigid environment to spread into the region. And the changes are happening with meteoric speed.

About 50,000 people live north of the Arctic Circle in Alaska and another 150,000 live north of the Arctic Circle in Canada.

“These are the people who are paying the price of these radical changes,” Waterman says. “These indigenous people who have done the least to cause it are going to suffer the most – whether it’s the people of the far north or low-lying islands.”

That means something to me. In 2023 I traveled to the Marshall Islands, where sea levels are rising and residents are being forced to make decisions about which islands to try to save and which to let the sea take.

Into the Thaw is a bittersweet read for anyone who cares about the future of the planet, but Waterman manages to lighten things up with a swish of humor. Want to know what moose tastes like? Or how it feels like to accidently spray yourself with bear spray? But beyond the humorous misadventures lies a darker truth.

“What’s going on on planet earth is a crisis and I think we’ve understated the crisis,” Waterman said in a phone interview this week. “Our children or our children’s children are going to be suffering the consequences of what we have done to the planet.”

Read more: Waterman’s essay about the 2022 expedition, “My 500-mile Journey Across Alaska’s Thawing Arctic,” appeared in the New York Times in December.

As Waterman and Korbulic made their way, they met with experts like Gary Kofinas, who points out that we should call the heating of our planet a climate crisis or climate emergency instead of global warming, and refer to those who don’t believe in it as climate science deniers instead of sceptics.

But Waterman’s interviews with people who live in small villages throughout the region make the most impact. They talk frankly about how rain now falls in December, cold snaps are shorter, and temperatures soar to 100 in the summer.

“Maybe people down south could reduce their emissions,” one local suggests.

Read more: Waterman’s Atlas of National Parks Might Inspire Your Next Trip

Hope for the future

“This is not a bummer book. I’ve been going to the Arctic because I’m kind of doe-eyed with wonder about the place, its animals and the people,” he says. “It’s changing, yes, but it’s not necessarily all catastrophic.”

The book wraps with an appendix of things humans can do to help – everything from voting for candidates who push for climate action to riding bicycles instead of driving, avoiding air travel when possible, and reusing and recycling instead of buying new things.

“I’d like to believe that as soon as we get past inauguration and accept this bitter pill we have to swallow the next four years, people will be empowered and find ways to take action,” he says.

Waterman’s work isn’t done. Because he worries that his message isn’t reaching a wide enough audience, he plans next to focus on how climate change is impacting our national parks.

“If people can understand what’s happening to these places that are so universally treasured, maybe we can bring more attention to reducing emissions and solving these problems,” he says.