North to the Future: An Offline Adventure Through the Changing Wilds of Alaska

In this spirited debut travelogue, Weissenbach, a journalist and L.A. native, recounts trekking around Alaska in 2019 as a 20-year-old college student looking to escape the hustle and bustle of modern life. While accompanying ecologist Roman Dial on a 360-mile expedition studying climate change’s effects on the Brooks Mountain Range, Weissenbach learned to howl like a wolf to scare off curious packs and found that Alaska’s forests are expanding as its permafrost thaws. He also recounts tagging along with Matt Nolan as the glaciologist flew over the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in a bush plane taking photographs that formed the basis of detailed 3D maps that could be used to detect illegal incursions from oil companies. Throughout, Weissenbach frets that humanity will “trade the world for images of it” and describes how spending 11 winter days alone in an off-grid cabin with virtually no sunlight and -40º nights helped teach him how to be present instead of escaping into his phone. Weissenbach spins the immersive travel writing into a soulful meditation on the value of getting back to nature, whether to better understand the changes it’s undergoing or to better understand oneself. This will transport readers. Agent: Bonnie Nadell, Hill Nadell Literary. (July)