Isobel Wylie Hutchison (1889–1982)

What a wonderful book. Hutchison was a Scottish botanist who clearly fell in love with the Arctic and its people. Her first book was about her trip to Greenland, this one about Alaska and the Northwest territories of Canada, all on the northernmost coast. This is where she met Gus Masik, the topic of her next book, Arctic Nights Entertainments, a biography/autobiography as she shares author credits with Gus. Enduring -40F temperatures pretty regularly does not seem to dampen her spirits, as she takes dog sled trips sitting on top of the 500 lbs of luggage she had. There is some botany mentioned but not unlike Evelyn Cheesman, she seems to intuit that the reader can only handle so much Latin nomenclature so there is more descriptive prose about the sights, scenes and people. She brought her many samples back to Kew Gardens (list in book). Also, she collected a long list of artifacts (detailed in the index) for the British Museum. One wonders if some of those very pieces are being repatriated to ethnic American and Canadian Museums. Just a fascinating book.… (meer)