Turk to Read "Crocodiles and Ice"

SEELEY LAKE - Jon Turk will be presenting his new book “Crocodiles and Ice” Saturday, Oct. 1, at 7 p.m. at the Grizzly Claw Trading Company sponsored by Alpine Artisans’ Open Book Club. As Turk states, “Crocodiles and Ice is a scientist/adventurer’s journey into a Consciousness Revolution based on a deep, reciprocal communication with the Earth. The book highlights my award winning polar expedition circumnavigating Ellesmere Island, as well as other, lesser known passages.”

Jon Turk has a PhD in chemistry and has worked in theoretical research and environmental education. But he found another calling and abandoned academics to engage in extreme adventure all over the world. Despite little experience and, it would seem, not a lot of common sense (per Publisher’s Weekly), Turk embarked on great journeys. This is his second appearance at the Open Book Club and we look forward to another entertaining as well as thought provoking evening. Open Book Club is free to all.

Having been unable to yet read “Crocodiles and Ice” as it just came out Sept. 16, the following is Jon Turk’s description from his website.

“Crocodiles and Ice is a memoir, a classic narrative where the central character (me) takes a physical and emotional journey struggling to find a sane and compassionate home in a world that initially doesn’t make sense…. In my case it (the journey) takes place on a world stage: in prisons, oceans, mountains and ice fields.”

Here is how Turk describes his chapters: Chapter 1 – from prison in Jordan to the jaws of a crocodile, Chapter 2 – circumnavigation of Ellesmere Island: a wolf that lingers, Chapter 3 – bike ride to the Dalai Lama’s birthplace, Chapter 4 – long ago person found: in a glacier and in the city.

The first paragraph of “Crocodiles and Ice” reads, “The iceberg drifted lazily in the current surrounded by a phalanx of smaller floes and basketball sized bergy bits compressed into daiquiri thick slurry. Then, as if the Himalayan Mountains were rising from the sea, the iceberg slammed into the cliff, stalled, shattered, cracked with a loud groan and smeared vertically against solid rock. Boomer and I were doomed.”

Turk’s stories are gripping and often blend together history, mythology and adventure as well as humor and philosophical musings.