The New England
Chapter of
The Explorers Club
"Explorer is an untidy term with vagueness around the edges. But there are many like me who have to accept it, because of wanderings into unknown places, with a smattering of ethnology, an awareness of directions, an unusual appetite for fresh air and, above all, an insatiable curiosity to look around corners and over ridges and horizons and through the chinks in curtained windows."

--Hassoldt Davis
Next Scheduled Event
As you contemplate Punxsatawney Phil's verdict, please join us for another meeting of the New England Chapter of The Explorers Club, to be held on Tuesday, February 26th. We are pleased to welcome Jill Fredston, a leading North American avalanche specialist and sea kayaking explorer, down from north of the 60th parallel.

For years, Jill and her husband, Doug Fesler, have led double lives. In the winter, they work together in Alaska as avalanche specialists. Then, every summer, they disappear on three-to-five-month-long rowing trips in the Arctic and sub-Arctic. Self-sufficient, in two small boats, they have rowed more than 21,000 miles including along much of the coast of Alaska, the length of Norway from Sweden to Russia, and the rugged shoreline of Labrador. They have woven their way through west Greenland's colossal icebergs and circumnavigated the island of Spitsbergen. For Doug and Jill, these trips are neither a vacation nor an escape, but a way of life. Her new book, "Rowing to Latitude: Journeys Along the Arctic's Edge" published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, is a vivid celebration of these northern journeys and the insights they inspire. Her presentation, which will put you only inches above the waterline and nose to nose with polar bears, will leave you wondering how a whale could possibly have ended up hanging on the side of a mountain.
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