The New Yorker & Me: Kevin Wild's Superb "42 Days Alone"

Introduction

What is The New Yorker? I know it’s a great magazine and that it’s a tremendous source of pleasure in my life. But what exactly is it? This blog’s premise is that The New Yorker is a work of art, as worthy of comment and analysis as, say, Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Each week I review one or more aspects of the magazine’s latest issue. I suppose it’s possible to describe and analyze an entire issue, but I prefer to keep my reviews brief, and so I usually focus on just one or two pieces, to explore in each the signature style of its author. A piece by Nick Paumgarten is not like a piece by Jill Lepore, and neither is like a piece by Ian Frazier. One could not mistake Collins for Seabrook, or Bilger for Galchen, or Mogelson for Kolbert. Each has found a style, and it is that style that I respond to as I read, and want to understand and describe.

Wednesday, February 4, 2026

Kevin Wild's Superb "42 Days Alone"

This is just a quick note on Kevin Wild’s exhilarating seven-hour-forty-seven-minute YouTube video 42 Days Alone: A Perilous 650 km Solo Journey Across the Labrador Wilderness. I’m currently immersed in it. I’m on Day 23. “Immersion” is the right word for the experience of watching this incredible documentary. Wild’s skilful camerawork (including breathtaking drone footage) and sound recording put me right there with him in his seemingly indestructible red Prospector canoe as he paddles wild rivers and lakes, portages over boulder-strewn land thick with willow, runs menacing rapids, and battles blood-thirsty hordes of mosquitoes and black flies. Along the way, he sees bears, moose, caribou, eagles, lynx, and the aurora borealis. He catches trout. He camps, makes fires, cooks, swims, and every now and then has a taste of whiskey to celebrate the completion of a particularly arduous stage of his journey. Wild is an excellent canoeist and outdoorsman. His commentary is always intelligent and illuminating. The rugged, magnificent Labrador landscape he travels through is wild to the limits of the term. This is the best wilderness travel video I’ve ever seen. Highly recommended.

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READINGS

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