"There's a maxim that other adventurers know well:
‘It's not a real adventure until you've [thought about] quitting several times.' If you don't reach that edge where you're pushed so far physically and psychologically that you really want to quit, then it's just an outing or a fun trip, and the demands of the Northwest Passage made me consider quitting all the time.
I did quit once. I was pulling a sled on the sea ice in April 1998. I was alone [except for] my dog. I wanted to quit every day for ten days running, at first just for the usual reasons. I worked through those feelings of suffering. But then I had a new problem—the sea ice was melting early that year.
El Niño was really affecting the Arctic in the spring of 1998. The creeks were opening up on the land and flooding the sea ice. I was forced off the sea ice onto the land.
I had to drag my sled on gravel [and] could only make about ten miles [16 kilometers] a day. I wasn't making many miles. I went for three more days. It all finally came to wrap when I met an Inuit polar bear hunter.
I asked him for advice. He said, ‘If you keep going, the next time I see you, you'll be in a bear scat.' So I took a ride out with him and quit. [I] waited two months for the sea ice to melt completely and went back with my kayak."
—Writer-photographer Jonathan Waterman
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