In 1845 Sir John Franklin and his expedition, sailing on the "Erebus" and the "Terror," set out in search of the Northwest Passage. In their pursuit of that elusive water route across North America they all perished, their fate remaining unknown for many years. Franklin and his crew inspired a spate of books on exploration in the nineteenth century, and interest in his expedition has revived with the recent discovery of the bodies of several of its members, perfectly preserved by ice for nearly a century and half. "Thirty Years in the Arctic Regions," originally published in 1859, is Franklin's own record of his earlier explorations that put the high arctic on the map, and includes his last letter and reports tracing the expedition's last movements. He describes the daily progress of his two overland expeditions from 1818 to 1827, which covered a thousand miles between the Great Slave Lake and the Arctic Ocean and charted fourteen hundred miles of coastline between Cape Beechey in present-day Alaska and Bathurst Inlet, to the north of Hudson Bay. It is a narrative filled with the exhilarating strangeness of everything about the Far North and unimaginable hardship endured heroically.
Bil Gilbert's introduction is informed by a first-hand feeling for what Franklin was up against. Several years ago he followed much of the explorer's route, an experience that is described in "Our Nature "(Nebraska, 1986).

Bil Gilbert is one of America's most preeminent and popular essayists and nature writers. If you've ever opened a copy of Smithsonian, Audubon, or Sports Illustrated magazines, you've likely come across an article by Gilbert. In the past four decades, more than 350 of his articles and essays have appeared in places ranging from Esquire to the New York Times. Natural Coincidence collects some of Bil Gilbert's finest writing, covering a diverse range of subjects that include investigations of the biology of Tasmanian devils, the lives and loves of snapping turtles, and an appreciation of the intelligence of crows. Perfectly suiting this eclectic choice of angles is Gilbert's unique writing style, a blend of unprepossessing erudition, wit, and honesty that has been compared to Aldo Leopold's Sand County Almanac. The collection opens with a memoir of a childhood Christmas in western Michigan, before Gilbert's fascination with the natural world drew him to more exotic locales like Tasmania, Alaska, Nova Scotia, and Manhattan to write about such topics as the javelina, bigfoot, buffalo, and ringtails. More than 50 years ago, writes Gilbert, without a clear notion about why or where I was going, I set off on a trip from Kalamazoo, Michigan. I am still traveling toward an unknown destination. But along the way, much more for reasons of good luck than thoughtful planning, I have met many wonderful beings and happenings. The essays appearing in Natural Coincidence represent an attempt to describe some of these wonders. I like to think, or at least pretend, that the inspiration for and theme of this book is gratitude.