Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube: Chasing Fear and Finding Home in the Great White North
Written by Blair Braverman
Narrated by Blair Braverman
4/5
()
About this audiobook
A rich and revelatory memoir of a young woman confronting her fears and finding home in the North.
Blair Braverman fell in love with the North at an early age: By the time she was nineteen, she had left her home in California, moved to Norway to learn how to drive sled dogs, and worked as a tour guide on a glacier in Alaska.
By turns funny and sobering, bold and tender, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube charts Blair’s endeavor to become a “tough girl”—someone who courts danger in an attempt to become fearless. As she ventures into a ruthless arctic landscape, Blair faces down physical exhaustion—being buried alive in an ice cave, and driving a dogsled across the tundra through a whiteout blizzard in order to avoid corrupt police—and grapples with both love and violence as she negotiates the complex demands of being a young woman in a man’s land.
Brilliantly original and bracingly honest, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube captures the triumphs and the perils of the journey to self-discovery and independence in a landscape that is as beautiful as it is unforgiving.
Blair Braverman
BLAIR BRAVERMAN is a writer, dogsledder, and adventurer who uses innovative storytelling to make the outdoors accessible. She is the author of Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube, a contributing editor to Outside magazine, and a contributor to The New York Times, Vogue, This American Life, and elsewhere. She lives in the northwoods with her husband, Quince Mountain, and their team of sled dogs.
Related to Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube
Related audiobooks
Bliss(ters): How I walked from Mexico to Canada One Summer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Thousand-Miler: Adventures Hiking the Ice Age Trail Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Thirst: 2600 Miles to Home Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Almost Somewhere: Twenty-Eight Days on the John Muir Trail Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unbound: A Story of Snow and Self-Discovery Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Your Blue Is Not My Blue: A Missing Person Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Becoming Odyssa: Adventures on the Appalachian Trail Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Girl in the Woods: A Memoir Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5On Trails: An Exploration Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Walking Thru: A Couple's Adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The World's Worst Backpacker Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Crazy for the Storm Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Higher Love: Climbing and Skiing the Seven Summits Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Into the Planet: My Life as a Cave Diver Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Naked and Marooned Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Man Who Walked Through Time: The Story of the First Trip Afoot Through the Grand Canyon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Powder Days: Ski Bums, Ski Towns and the Future of Chasing Snow Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5AWOL on the Appalachian Trail Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Found: A Life in Mountain Rescue Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Walden on Wheels: On the Open Road from Debt to Freedom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Walking to Listen: 4,000 Miles Across America, One Story at a Time Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Wild Idea Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The United States of Adventure: A life-changing journey by bike through every state of America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Ten Years a Nomad: A Traveler's Journey Home Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This One Wild Life: A Mother-Daughter Wilderness Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Same River Twice: A Memoir of Dirtbag Backpackers, Bomb Shelters, and Bad Travel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leave It As It Is: A Journey Through Theodore Roosevelt's American Wilderness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/52,000 Miles Together Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Free Outside: A Trek Against Time and Distance Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Tenth Island: Finding Joy, Beauty, and Unexpected Love in the Azores Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Adventurers & Explorers For You
Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis Thomas Jefferson And The Opening Of The American West Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Curse of Oak Island: The Story of the World's Longest Treasure Hunt Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Exotic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Openin Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5When You Find My Body: The Disappearance of Geraldine Largay on the Appalachian Trail Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Uncertain Sea: Fear is everywhere. Embrace it. Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Becoming The Iceman: Pushing Past Perceived Limits Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Gator Country: Deception, Danger, and Alligators in the Everglades Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5BMF: The Rise and Fall of Big Meech and the Black Mafia Family Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5World Travel: An Irreverent Guide Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Venom Doc: The Edgiest, Darkest, Strangest Natural History Memoir Ever Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Reaching beyond Boundaries: A Navy SEAL's Guide to Achieving Everything You've Ever Imagined Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5My Infamous Life: The Autobiography of Mobb Deep's Prodigy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Art of Resilience: Strategies for an Unbreakable Mind and Body Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Ready to Come About Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5There's a Hole in my Bucket: A Journey of Two Brothers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Off Grid and Free: My Path to the Wilderness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Brave Companions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Into the Planet: My Life as a Cave Diver Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Elon Musk: A Biography of Business, Success and Entrepreneurship Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ship Beneath the Ice: The Discovery of Shackleton’s Endurance Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Farther Than Any Man: The Rise and Fall of Captain James Cook Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Captain's Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALs, and Dangerous Days at Sea Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Writing of the Gods: The Race to Decode the Rosetta Stone Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5That Wild Country: An Epic Journey through the Past, Present, and Future of America's Public Lands Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Impossible First Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube
79 ratings10 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A great, honest, intimate book. Loved it. Thank you for sharing your story.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fun book to read. Gives insight into small town life in Norway.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5It was just ok. I loved the northern perspectives and some other aspects of the life of this girl but also it missed any action for me. Just a decent, long tale. Calming in a way.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Blair Braverman has always felt drawn to the north and the cold and the snow. As a teenager she lived in Norway and had some bad experiences but she went back, even further north, and made the life that she was looking for.Content warning for abuse and sexual assault.I enjoyed Blair’s outlook on life. She sees bad things that happen to her (cold weather survival, getting buried in snow, abuse from an authority figure, sexual assault) as just, things that happened, rather than signs that she is or is not on the right path. They’re not holding her back but they’re not particularly driving her either. I also really enjoy winter/cold, though not as much as she does, and in a world where I feel it’s always expected to love summer and heat Blair is, pun intended, a breath of fresh air.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Braverman's coming-of-age memoir is as raw, wild, and visceral as the Arctic. Great read.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5a great read, an exciting memoir in Arctic Norway, sled-dogging on an Alaskan glacier, and coming of age and succeeding in a male dominated world.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube was an interesting memoir but I felt it needed more sled dogs and far less men are terrible (thus leading to Braverman's intense insecurity to which the reader is subjected at very close quarters).
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Braverman paints such a vivid picture of a cold landscape and colder people (some of whom have a surprising core of warmth inside). This is what I love about memoir: This is not a person with whom I have much in common, living a life that would make me miserable, but she makes me interested in her growth, satisfied in her stead.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This book is at its best when Braverman is dogsledding or relaying her experiences in Arctic regions and/or becoming a musher.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'm not that big on personal journey/coming-of-age memoirs, but I liked how she framed her own story within the northern settings—Alaska, north Norway, and Wisconsin; glaciers, sled dogs, and grumpy old men. In particular, she didn't turn the grumpy old men into caricatures—they had their gruff and charming aspects, but they were also dysfunctional, lonely, crude, and just plain strange, which I found much more effective. Braverman's passages about her dogs won me over as well—she loved them as well, perhaps better, than just about anyone else in the book. (Another winner on the DTDD™ balance sheet.) But mostly I enjoyed this for its unexpectedness, and the twists and turns in what could have otherwise been a conventional story. Besides the old men and sled dogs, I came away with oddly loving feelings for an old store full of antique junk, which is no small feat.Also, let's be honest, it's August in New York City and anything with a lot of ice and negative temperatures warms (cools?) my heart right now.