Chasing Alaska

July 8, 2013
Bernard, a reporter who lived in Alaska for several years, has crafted a memoir of his time there that neatly dovetails with his discovery that he was not the first Bernard to run away from a mundane life in order to explore Alaska. Joe Bernard, C.B.'s Arctic-exploring relative of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, left behind a set of journals of which excerpts are sprinkled throughout. They're gripping tales of men freezing to death on the ice, Inuit life, and survival under the harshest conditions. It's not surprising that Bernard's contemporary musings on Alaska seem lackluster in comparison, but when he rides along with an overextended Alaskan state trooper or flies with a Search-and-Rescue pilot charged with hundreds of miles of surveillance, he's able to peel back his romanticizing of the earlier age to ask intriguing questions about the nature of life in the wilderness. His finest chapter is spent with his distant cousin, a man who knew Joe, knows Alaska, and cannot be summarized. While Bernard overworks tiresome tropes about the shallowness of Alaskan tourists, the story of Joe Bernardâand his descendants' attempts to understand him and each otherâmakes this worth a read. B & W Photos.