North to the Light Quotes

“To face a life in these extremes, these men must live to a code of machismo that would wither the men of many cultures. Is it somehow required that, to hold your head high as a man among men, you must treat your life with such casual abandon? Or, I wondered, is it more than that? Is it tied to their overall spiritual view of life? By walking the thin line cast by the shadow of death, do they come to know life with an intimacy that the timid cannot?”
― Alvah Simon, North to the Light: A Year in the Arctic Ice