Book Report: Into the Light

I can't stop reading stories about sea voyages. In fact, it's a bit of an obsession, and I've been on this reading kick for close to a year. Books, blogs, you name it. If it's about sailing the ocean blue, I want to read it.

A fellow cruising couple suggested I check out Into the Light by Dave and Jaja Martin, which tells of that family's travels from the United States to above the Arctic Circle in a 33-foot steel boat. They spent winters in Iceland and Norway, experiencing days of total darkness and the painted on sky of the Northern Lights. During the summers, they sailed across the Arctic Circle, dodging icebergs and polar bears and seeing some of the most fantastic and inaccessible scenery on the planet. 

Essentially, the book was a diary of their travels, with flashbacks to their circumnavigation a few years earlier. Not poetry but certainly an inspiring narrative that makes you want to see the world. I've still got palm trees dancing in my head, personally, and would prefer the tropical track to one punctuated by glaciers, but I enjoy hearing other people's stories of venturing out their front doors. It's a reminder that, in many ways, neither money nor prestige stand in the way of that first step on the road. All it takes is going. And finishing everything on your list of doom, of course!