The Last Speaker of Bear: My Encounters in the North

by Lawrence Millman

Overview

The Last Speaker of Bear is the patchwork story of a life spent traveling in the north from Alaska to Siberia. Lawrence Millman first visited northern Canada as a child and has spent four decades since on some thirty-five expeditions in search of undeveloped landscapes and traditional cultures, not to mention untamed wildlife. While much of his experience is centered in Canada—including territories from Yukon to Quebec and Newfoundland/Labrador—he includes stories from villages in Greenland, Iceland, and Norway as well.

Early on, Millman developed a reverence for the wisdom of indigenous and native communities with histories spanning centuries: Inuit, Inuk, Innu, Alutiiq, Cree, and others. Whether dining on mushrooms, fungus, tobacco leaves, or unusual foods that would have made even Andrew Zimmern or Anthony Bourdain turn up their noses, or exploring northern tundras, rugged mountains, or remote islands, he paints a picture of people often living in tenuous conditions but rooted in a faith that their worlds will provide for them. Relationships with bears, caribou, reindeer, walruses, seals, whales, and abundant avian life serve spiritual, companionship, and sustenance purposes. Traditions grounded in family and community rituals thrive, as do lost languages, natural medicine, and time-honored ways to survive difficult circumstances.. 

In this collection of vignettes, Millman reminds us of the potency of endangered knowledge as well as the importance of paying close attention to the natural world. He opens our eyes to a life in remote places thousands of miles from the fast-paced, urban world so many of us inhabit.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781595349859
Publisher:	Trinity University Press
Publication date:	10/25/2022
Pages:	228
Sales rank:	667,737
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Lawrence Milliam is an arctic explorer and mycologist. He has taught at Tufts University, the Universityof Iceland, Universityof Minnesota, Vermont College, and Harvard University(Extension) and is the author of sixteen books, including At the End of the World and Fungipedia. He has received a Guggenheim Award, Fulbright Fellowship, and Bush Foundation Fellowship. He has appeared in major media including National Geographic, the Atlantic Monthly, Smithsonian, Sports Illustrated, Outside, the Times Literary Supplement, the Boston Globe, the London Sunday Times, and the Journal of American Folklore. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Read an Excerpt

Preface

            My love affair with the North began when my parents took me on a fishing trip in northern Ontario. Our Cree guide reputedly talked to the fish, which, according to the other guides, was the reason his clients caught so many walleyes and northern pike. Once we got into his boat, I gazed at the myriad lines on his face and observed his bodily movements with such interest that my fishing line invariably got tangled up with my parents’ lines.

            Whenever one of us caught a fish, the Cree man would remove it from the hook, bring it closely to his lips, and whistle into its mouth. He also seemed to be communicating with the lake itself, now nodding and now shaking his head when he looked at it. Out of my parents’ hearing, I asked him whether I could come and live with him so I could learn the ways of the Cree. He laughed. I was 12 years old at the time.

            When I started venturing North on my own, I would find myself in a realm where Nature triumphs over the machinations of Man (Woman, too). Hurrah! I’d shout to myself, but then I would see evidence of climate change raising not just its ugly head, but its ugly body, too. After all, the North is warming two to three times faster than the rest of the planet. When will the last hurrah occur?  

            During my northern journeys, my only companion was often solitude, but no less often I would hang out with grizzled (the more grizzled, the better) facsimiles of the Cree fishing guide. These individuals would gratify me with traditional lore as well as tell me stories about their own past lives as hunter-gatherers. Sometimes I would hear what happened in the old days when they

ran out of food.

            Speaking of food, I often dined on time-honored victuals such as seal liver, hakarl (putrefied Icelandic shark’s meat), mataq (raw whale blubber), caribou tongue, igunaq (fermented walrus meat), old sled dogs, and jerked whale meat. Such culinary items helped me conquer a linguistic hurdle. After all, food is a shared language, so even if I barely spoke the language of my dining partner, I could at least speak the language of the food we were eating. Hm-m-m, very nice seal nose, the expression on my face would say.

            Given my variety of experiences, I decided to write a memoir about my time in the North. Easier said than done, for the narrative thread kept snapping under the weight of its numerous episodes. When the thread didn’t snap, it would rush off in all sorts of strange directions without asking my permission. Meanwhile, chronology itself bowed out, saying, in effect, “Sorry, but this is not my bailiwick.”

            I ended up banishing the idea of a memoir. Instead, I decided to collect the snapped episodes and put them together in a book. Brevity may or may not be the soul of wit, but it happens to be the soul of this book. 

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Preface

  Encounters with Northern Natives

  • ANNIE HENRY OF THE YUKON 

  • SURVIVAL

  • COLLECTING LORE

  • ROSIE IQALLIJUQ, AN INTERVIEW

  • DREAMS 

  • KILLING STORIES 

  • HUDSON

  • AULD LANG SYNE

  • AN EXPERT MECHANIC

  • LONGEVITY 

  • STRANGERS ON THE TUNDRA

  • AN ENCOUNTER WITH A QIVIQTOQ

  • SUPPORTING ART

  • A GREENLANDIC SOCCER MATCH

  • LATE TO SCHOOL

  • THE LAST WINDIGO

  • THE LAST SPEAKER OF BEAR

  
  

  Encounters with Flora, Fauna, and Food

  • FLYING IN CHUKOTKA

  • A GRIZZLY ENCOUNTER

  • SEAL HUNTING

  • AVIAN INTELLECT

  • MEETING WITH A MUSK OX

  • THE INUIT PUJOALUK

  • STARVATION CUISINE 

  • AN INUIT DELICACY

  • DOG FOOD

  • A DISH OF DEFECATION

  • IN AN ICELANDIC FOREST

  • STARING SESSION

  •  THE ORIGIN OF BLOODTHIRSTINESS

  • ORNITHOLOGY IN THE YUKON

  • STICK FIGURES

  Encounters with Remote Places

  • A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE

  • ANOTHER WALK ON THE WILD SIDE

  • MAKING CONTACT  

  • WHERE THE DEAD MEN REST

  • LEGENDS OF THE LOST

  • ANOTHER MISSING PERSON

  • A REMARKABLE PIMPLE

  • WRANGEL ISLAND’S WONDERS

  • LIQUID GOLD

  • THE BIGGEST BELLY IN THE WORLD

  • REACHING A SUMMIT

  • FARTHEST NORTH

  • ICELANDIC NOTES

  • EAST GREENLAND NOTES

  • THE BOYS OF WINTER

  • HELL ANIMAL

  • VIKING INVADERS

  • A NORTHERN HOLOCAUST

  Encounters, Miscellaneous in Nature

  • AN EXPEDITION CRUISE

  • A VINTAGE ENCOUNTER

  • COLD COMFORT 

  • REMEMBERING ELLIOTT MERRICK

  • AT THE GRAVE OF A MORAVIAN ESKIMO CHIEFTAIN

  • MEETING HELGI PJETURRS

  • A HEROINE OF THE ARCTIC       

  • MEETING HALLDOR LAXNESS 

  • A RARIFIED BALLAD

  • MURDERED BY A MADMAN 

  • A CHAT ABOUT EVIL SPIRITS

  • SOME LIKE IT HOT

  • THE ULTIMATE SOCIAL DISTANCER

  • CODA: WIND BLASTED

  Acknowledgements
  

Editorial Reviews

09/26/2022

Mycologist Millman (Fungipedia: A Brief Compendium of Mushroom Lore) recalls his travels through the North in this haphazard collection of “snapped episodes.” Describing solo journeys when Millman’s “only companion was often solitude,” as well as encounters with individuals in Alaska, Canada, and Greenland, Millman recalls interactions with Cree elder Jimmy Mianscum, who “had the step of a man half his age,” and an impromptu soccer game with 12-year-olds in Greenland: nobody wanted to be on Millman’s team, so he “ended up playing against all three of them” (and discovered that the children enjoyed kicking him as much as they did the ball). Later sections focus on the “flora, fauna, and food” Millman came across on his travels, including psychoactive mushrooms; seal eye, an “Inuit delicacy” that “met gaze with a seemingly unhappy gaze of its own”; and the meat of sled dogs (which had a “generic gamy flavor”). He warns that while “brevity may or may not be the soul of wit... it happens to be the soul of this book,” but the entries are often too compressed to really get into, and the tendency to jump around in time and place can be jarring. Readers in search of an adventure tale will be better served elsewhere. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Lawrence Millman is that rare traveler — a person with guts and a sense of humor.”  — Paul Theroux

Praise for The Last Speaker of Bear

"Though many of the essays are amusing, such as his run-in with 'Viking' marauders on a remote Icelandic island, climate change and its deleterious effects on landscapes, wildlife, and livelihoods are a common theme of his observations, and his anticipatory mourning for an Arctic close to vanishing forever serves as a potent reminder of the present reality." — Library Journal

“Lovers of Arctic lands and wanderlust will enjoy these armchair adventures imbued with Millman’s strengths of heart, mind, and humor.” — Booklist

“Captivating. A wonderful read.” —  Bernd Heinrich, author of Mind of the Raven: Investigations and Adventures with Wolf-Birds

"I can't think of a better guide to the frozen north - its people and its culture and its plants and animals - than Larry Millman" — Paul Theroux

“Whether delicately clearing his throat in a remote turf hut or sampling urumiit dropped from the wrong end of a ptarmigan, there is only one traveler in the past half century who has consistently revealed True North. If only we had been fortunate enough to have Larry Millman as our first visitor to the far northern edge of the world, before Western Civilization belched a parade of discoverers, explorers, and exploiters who canceled its cultures and cooked its climate.” —  PJ Capelotti, author of The Greatest Show in the Arctic

"When you want to know the essence of a place, you go have a look. You look for a long time. You go home, think about what you’ve seen, hit the library, return to that place, learn about its plants, animals, geology, climatology, peoples. You ask questions of elders who have long been on the land, throw out half of what you think you know, start all over. Lawrence Millman has done all these things, an education that underlies this wise, spry account of a lifetime’s travels in northerly places. No matter what your own home ground, you’ll learn much from Millman’s extraordinary book." — Gregory McNamee, author of Aelian's On the Nature of Animals

"Everything Lawrence Millman writes is original, most of it is funny and far more of it than we deserve is profound and true. This is a necessary book for a broken time. You should read it." ⁠—​ ​Paul Kingsnorth, author of ​Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist and Other Essays

"Millman is a one-of-a-kind adventurer and storyteller. His keen observations and beautiful writing transport readers to the ends of the earth with a unique combination of illuminating insight, wit and humor. This fantastic book is full of stories that only Millman could tell.” ⁠—​  Jonathan Reisman MD, author of The Unseen Body

Praise for Lost in the Artic

"Again and again, Millman extends a generous invitation for the reader to experience schadenfreude at his expense." — The New York Times

"He has a gonzo intrepidness ... Millman is rightfully beloved by travel writers." — Boston Globe

"Millman is a modern-day Rousseau." — The Washington Post Book World

"Wild, offbeat adventure ... with viscera and wit. For the armchair explorer, this is a ticket to the bizarre and quirky." — Morning News

Praise for An Evening Among Headhunters

"Millman finds wonder and beauty and humor in all of it... His knowledge of flora, fauna, history and culture is impressive, as is his rapport with the locals, wherever he is...Millman is a fine storyteller, just the sort of fellow you'd want to travel with, even if your ideal vacation doesn't include a drafty tent somewhere above the Arctic Circle and a succulent serving of seal eye (raw, natch)." — Publishers Weekly

"Millman writes with rare wit and humor...conveys this enthusiasm and even makes dining on boiled walrus in an igloo in the freezing cold seem fun. Highly recommended for all travel collections." — Library Journal

Praise for Last Places

​"​Readers who are captivated either by offbeat adventure or by the Far North need look no further​...​he captures the beauty and fragility of an austere landscape.​" — Publishers Weekly​

​"​Millman's acerbic wit makes the book extremely entertaining. He imparts his love and respect for the primitive radiance of the landscape and the hardy character of the region's often eccentric residents.​" — Library Journal

From the Publisher

09/16/2022

In this collection of short essays, nature writer, poet, and mycologist Millman (Goodbye, Ice: Arctic Poems; At the End of the World: A True Story of Murder in the Arctic) recounts various adventures experienced during his years of Arctic travel. From sampling psychotropic mushrooms in Siberia to attending a séance in Iceland, Millman's curiosity about Indigenous traditions and Arctic history led him to sample foods, such as ptarmigan (small bird) droppings, risk the wrath of a mother grizzly, and tour the remnants of the world's northernmost baseball field. Whether gathering lore from Inuit elders or describing the pristine beauty of a crater lake, the author relates his encounters with good humor and obvious affection. Though many of the essays are amusing, such as his run-in with "Viking" marauders on a remote Icelandic island, climate change and its deleterious effects on landscapes, wildlife, and livelihoods are a common theme of his observations, and his anticipatory mourning for an Arctic close to vanishing forever serves as a potent reminder of the present reality. VERDICT Although the brevity of the essays may make readers wish Millman had opted to write the fuller memoir he mentions in the preface, those interested in the Arctic will likely appreciate what they've gotten.—Sara Shreve

Library Journal