Looking back on a restless life, the National Book Award-winning author of Arctic Dreams charts his travels from Western Oregon to the Galapagos, and from the Kenyan desert to the ice shelves of Antarctica. Along the way, Barry Lopez probes the long history of humanity's thirst for exploration, including the prehistoric peoples who trekked across Skraeling Island in northern Canada, an enlightenment-era Englishman who sailed the Pacific, a Native American who found his way into isolationist Japan, and today's eco-tourists in the tropics.