Book Review

By Derryll White

Wharton, Thomas ( 1995). Icefields.

As if everything in the world is the history of ice.

— Michael Ondaatje, Coming Through Slaughter

This novel is Wharton’s first and is published in NeWest Press’s Nunatak editions. “Nunataks are especially selected works of outstanding fiction by new western authors.” ‘Icefields’ certainly lives up to that billing. Thomas Wharton values stories, has his characters tell them and gives the sense that he has also listened to many – the memory of a land, the memory of ice. He builds a house of words in a wilderness of beauty. “What he learned of her life was gathered in the shadow of her father’s story.”

Thomas Wharton’s phrases, such as “the gold of solitude and silence,” remind me of why I choose to live in the Rocky Mountains with the raven’s call and the approach of another cold winter. It is the wood stove, the removal and the richness of works such as this that makes this region sacred to me. The story here takes place in Jasper and Banff, a couple of hours away but the essence of it walks with me every day in the cold crystal air of East Kootenay. Wharton even refuses Samuel Taylor Coleridge in favour of Sara’s story of life along the Athabasca River.

‘Icefields’ is a wondrous story of passion – without abounding sex – passion for experience, for the natural world, for ice, for knowledge, for women and above all for life. Dr. Byrne lives as circumstance has driven him, to experience the unknown mysteries of ice. He has failings, but his strength is his all-consuming desire to know more.

This is a book that makes me feel blessed that I chose this region to live my life and pursue my own passions. Thomas Wharton will touch all who read ‘Icefields’ but it is uniquely meant for those of us who live here in the shadows of the glaciers. Although now 20 years old, ‘Icefields’ could be added to your Christmas list and enjoyed by everyone who recreates in the outdoors here.

“I want to show you something rather extraordinary.” — Dr. Byrne

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Excerpts from the novel:

HISTORY –Drifting back to England in his dreams.

The memory of visits to the botanical gardens at Kew, out of the city haze and into a fragrant, tidy wilderness. Marvelling at flowers grown from the specimens collected by David Douglas and other early scientist-explorers of the Rockies. In the humid glass cathedral of the Alpine House he leaned forward and breathed their delicate scents.

JASPER – The old Métis settlement called Jasper was near here. During the fur trade it was called Snow House, or Arcturus House, but some of the natives called it Jasper. Then when Yellowhead Pass was chosen as the rail route over the Divide, the town had to be located further down in the Athabasca valley. It’s wider there, of course, less of a grade for the railroad and not so beastly cold. Jasper wasn’t the first choice for a name, though. We called the place Fitzhugh for a while, in honour of one of the railroad moguls. When it was still just a tent city.

WOMEN – At first it is her language that shocks him. The way her words push him into an unfamiliar room, spin him around. She tells stories from her travels, stories he finds difficult to believe.

— I’m not sure, but I think I killed a man, on a lake near Chojend.

WRITING –Words always do that to me, even when I’m reporting what we like to call the facts. I think to myself, was that really what I saw, what I felt? But I keep trying. I have to try to nail things down with the exact words, and sometimes I feel I’ve come close. That’s the reward. To feel that nail go in and hold something.

ICE – The sun here sends forth billowing streamers and scintillant curtains of radiance. On earth this light acts strangely: it has substance, life: it bobs, spills, dances, changes direction. It appears and disappears suddenly, changing the colour and shape of objects in front of your eyes.

HISTORY – For Tyndall, a greater mystery than glacial dynamics was the human imagination. From a few scattered observations it had dared to reconstruct the prehistory of the world. Was imagination, he wondered, an energy locked like latent heat in ancient inorganic nature?

AURORA BOREALIS – The aurora was the radiance of a beautiful ice maiden. She lived in the far north, and her coldness repelled all suitors. But the king of elves and flowers fell in love wither, and his desire melted her frozen heart. That is how spring came.

STORIES – Byrne sets down his pen. Stories. They took their stories with them; to remind them who they were. And there were the tails brought back by those who scouted ahead. They moved through stories.

– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them.  When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.

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