The Warmth of Frostlines: A Chat with Author Neil Shea

I had the honor of chatting with my friend, colleague from Nat Geo magazine, and fellow LWON contributor Neil Shea, whose first book, Frostlines: A Journey Through Entangled Lives and Landscapes in a Warming Arctic, is now out there in the world!

It’s a lovely book. In it, Neil journeys through the Arctic seeking out the ties that bind the far north’s people, animals, ice, politics, struggles, darkness, and hopes. Field trips over years saw him babysitting wolf pups (I couldn’t be more jealous), gleaning wisdom from Indigenous hunters, tracking caribou herds, searching for signs of Vikings long vanished, and visiting the front line of a new Cold War. The book reveals a deep respect for the many Arctics Neil experienced and those still to come.

Here’s our convo, edited waaaaaay down. (I left out the discussion of pin worms, for example.) Enjoy! And get a copy of Frostlines! Heck, get two copies!

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JH: When did you first go to the North, and how many times total? When and how did you realize ‘this is my subject’?

NS: I went to the Arctic first in 2005 and probably another 17 times before the book was done. At some point I realized there is no such thing as “the Arctic.” There are instead many Arctics, all of them in relationship and in states of transition. I wanted to see as many of them as I could, to try to make some sense of how the top of the world is changing. Deciding to do this book didn’t happen to me one spectacular day. Over time it built up, like pressure, and only after this idea worked its way into me.

Beyond that, it was the wolves that made me do it. Meeting them changed me. I felt as thought I owed it to them somehow—to try to tell a different kind of story about them. [Read Neil’s recent LWON essay about telling that story.]

JH: I’m glad you mentioned the wolves, because for me, the animals are always the best thing about a place and I planned to ask you about them first.

I was thinking of my own experiences in the field with wild animals, and how I sometimes have tell myself to be in the moment, rather than to always be thinking as the journalist about how this or that observation might fit the story.

So, while among these animals, did you find yourself realizing, oh damn, all I’m doing is crafting text in my head about this moment instead of being in it? Or was it natural for you to set the “work” aside?

NS: It was both. There were certain moments where, yeah, I was thinking ‘I’m definitely gonna write about this!’ And I think if you’ve been doing it for a long time, you’re trained to record certain details. You know you’ll need to remember the sensory experience, for example. So, your brain clues in to those things for the good of the story.

But there were times when things happened so fast with animals that I couldn’t record them as notes. And I think those were the moments that I was probably most present for, and that are the most memorable now. I didn’t have time to get out my notebook. So, I just experienced the thing.

JH: Give me an example?

NS: Sure. In the book I describe how we had been following the wolves using ATVs, and then occasionally we’d race ahead so we could set up the cameras and film the animals as they passed. And once when we did this, the wolves had been on one course and then they abruptly changed direction and came right back and walked through the midst of us. It was so sudden that none of us was ready for it.

The wolves came right up to me. One started sniffing around the tailpipe of my ATV, and then she stood directly in front of me and just stared. Then I felt these other presences come in from the sides, so I was surrounded. They weren’t trying to eat me or anything, but they were sort of naturally hunting me. Exploring what I was. And I didn’t have time to pull my notebook; I was just there, on the ice, with the wolves.

JH: Did you feel kind of honored that they were interested in you? That’s been my experience with wild animals that choose to come close like that. You feel special.

NS: Well, I could see them communicating with each other, like dogs do with a little lift of the lip, flick of the tail, twitch of the ear. And I had this distinct feeling they were talking about how disgusting I was. I mean, they were probably saying, this guy smells bad…like sweat and fuel and filth…what the hell? And It felt like they were rolling their eyes at my humanness. So, did I feel special? I’m not sure.

Of course, who knows what they were actually saying. I sort of love the mystery of that.

JH: Okay, so the wolves were one “character” in the book, and it seemed to me that the cold was another. How did you manage working in such tough conditions? Is the cold a bad memory or was it part of the Arctic’s beauty for you? Maybe both?

NS: I have come to think of the Arctic cold as sort of this invisible fabric that holds everything together. I got to see the different ways it manifests—as ice on my boots, as an expanse of frozen tundra, as something cultural, as something dangerous. It was a constant presence.

I recently heard an Inuit hunter say, you can’t be afraid of the cold. You can’t let yourself become afraid of the cold, because that’s when it gets you. So while there was an alarm in the back of my head, and sometimes the cold made it really hard to sleep, usually there was something else going on that had my attention and pushed down any real concern for my toes.

JH: I was thinking about how, as journalists, often we pop into a place, take notes, pop back out, then try to write something meaningful…but how valuable is our take when we had such limited exposure, especially to people of different cultures? I wondered how you feel about that—if your multiple trips and the relationships you built let you feel you were more than just a visitor.

NS: That’s always the dream, right? To be able to get past that initial visitor status. When you arrive to a place, you’re in this probationary bubble, and you probably won’t escape it because there’s not enough time.

While I didn’t get to go back to every place more than once, I was able to spend much more time in some areas than a visitor would. One of the towns, I was there for three weeks, which is not that long but I managed to “embed” in a special way. The photographer and I stayed in a house that was for itinerant teachers for the local school. And as part of that, we were invited to teach classes, and we jumped at the chance because we knew we’d make connections with the kids and their parents, with the community. So, we would go in every day and talk a little bit about what we were doing, acknowledging our temporary status but stressing the depth of our interest. And very quickly we were “known” to everyone (it was a small town). We were still visitors, but that engagement made a difference in how we were seen and accepted.

That’s always a strategy for me, to not just pepper people with questions but be present with them as much as they’ll let me. You can’t really write honestly about someone based just on brief encounters.

JH: You write with a certain lyricism that I love, and you are great at being part of the story without it being all about you. I know that you’re a very exacting writer, so talk about your process…because it sounds effortless in the end, which I know is always the goal. Do you feel like you had to torture it into submission or was it as organic as it feels?

NS: I tortured myself so, so much. I look at it now, and I realize it didn’t have to be that way. And much of the best writing came out when I was able to sort of unclench and just let it happen.

I felt a lot of pressure, this being my first book. I felt an enormous weight trying to get both animals and indigenous people right. And by right, I mean to portray them honestly and accurately, and to show my respect for them.

And then there was also that feeling that if you don’t do this book right, you’re not going to get another chance. So, it was more painful than it needed to be. Self-imposed pain.

JH: This book is animals and Indigenous peoples, it’s places and politics, it’s tragic stories and hopeful stories, it’s past, present and future. How were you able to pull all these threads together?

NS: Going in, I definitely did not know how it would all stitch together. My greatest fear was that I was just going to end up with a book people described as a collection of magazine articles. And in fact, recently, somebody said that in a book review, and I was really pissed because I worked really hard to not make the chapters feel that way. But at the same time, it’s far from obvious how, for example, the wolves are related to the Norwegian-Russian border. In many cases it’s not easy to see how to get from here to there.

So, I’d write and then read the drafts of each chapter noticing how they were talking to each other (or not) and looking for places where I could make connections. Here, we’re talking about caribou, then when we get to Norway, and now they’re reindeer, but they still do the same things. Trying to make these lines connect through.

It still ended up that each chapter has its own identity, that each could stand alone. But that just emphasizes this idea that I mentioned before, that there are many different Arctics, which is something I hope the reader comes away with. It’s so big and so varied, you can’t go through the region and have the same experience in different areas. There are multiple worlds up there.

JH: You’ve managed to write a book that, despite what’s happening to the Arctic, the ice, the people, is still hopeful. Did you get the sense there is a lot of hope there? Is the doom-gloom attitude something we bring with us more than we actually find it where we go?

NS: First, I don’t think I would be able to write a book that was just a downer, and I really didn’t want to do that. It is a very Caucasian thing to do, as you say; we go in and say, ah, this place is fucked, and maybe we come up with strategies to make things better that may or may not be appropriate. And then we turn to something else.

At a certain point, despair is a privilege, right? Giving up is just an easy thing to do if you can afford it. The people in the North can’t afford to give up and just think there’s nothing to be done.

Also, there’s so much beauty and warmth up there, in the people and communities, and in the scientists studying there. They’re not all about this sort of impending doom that we talk about in the South. They’re living their lives, doing their work, period. So, it didn’t take much to step outside of the despair, because you’re there with them seeing what else there is. You’re watching people go fishing or play with their kids, you’re watching wolves hunt and raise their pups, you’re hanging with scientists excited about their research. There are plenty of places where wonder still exists. I certainly found plenty of it.

Of course, it’s also true you can’t talk about the North without those notes of tragedy. But they live together. I mean, it’s like life anywhere else, right? It’s never just happy stories, but also not everything is falling apart.

JH: How do you handle coming home? And does the whole experience feel terribly distant now or can you conjure up the feelings as needed?

Well, both. I have a calmer relationship with leaving and coming home than I used to. Also, my kids are young enough that they demand a presence that just precludes everything else, so it’s not that I come home and spend time neatly putting my stuff away and pondering the experience. I have to quickly come back into my role here, and just do it. It might be a month before I unpack my bags.

But I can still summon the most important, the biggest memories, and the others just flow in sometimes. That corny idea that a place gets into your bloodstream? There’s something to that.

JH: Setting aside the beatings you give yourself, are you mostly happy with how the book turned out?

I guess the one thing I’m not sure came across in the book well enough is my feeling that the people who should be making decisions about what happens in the North are the Indigenous people who live there. Arctic Canada and Alaska and Greenland, they belong to their cultures and people in ways we just can’t comprehend. We’re so far removed from that kind of relationship with land and animals that to go up there and pretend we can make good decisions is a crime.

So, that’s a big takeaway I want to stress. The Arctic is largely still an indigenous place, and its people are the people who should be choosing what to do with it, on it, in it, in the future.

JH: Will you go back?

I would love to go back. I’d love to keep doing stories in the North. I’d love to take my family. I’d love my sons to experience the various Arctics themselves.

I think if I do another book, it’ll be about Greenland. So, the North may not be done with me yet.

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Frostlines cover photo by Neil Shea

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