A Conversation with Caroline Van Hemert: Author of The Sun Is a Compass for Grit Lit

Author Caroline Van Hemert and The Cairn Project Community Manager Angie Marie discussed Caroline’s experiences as a mother who prioritizes adventure while balancing family life and highlighting the challenges of integrating adventure into their lives as a family unit. 

Angie

Welcome to the Cairn Project Grit Lit — stories of women and adventure. Every quarter, we read a book that elevates the stories of women outside. I’m Angie, a Cairn project ambassador, book lover, and fellow Outdoors Woman. I’m interviewing our Grit Lit authors so we can explore the adventure beyond their books. After you get your next great loot box and read the book inside, you can send in your questions for that author will share the conversation with you afterwards to keep the spirit of adventure strong. Today we’re chatting with Caroline van Hemert, author of The Sun is a Compass: My 4000 Mile Journey into the Alaskan Wilds.

Caroline

Hi, I’m Caroline Van Hemert. I’m a biologist working in Alaska and have lived in Alaska most of my and I’m also a writer, author of The Sun is a Compass, as Angie mentioned. As far as why do this, right, I guess that’s a million dollar question for those of us who are drawn to something difficult [writing a book]. It’s a little bit of an insular process at times. But I have a background in in creative writing, and I hadn’t really had a chance to explore that. So before I went back for graduate work in biology, I did a master’s in creative writing. And it was one of those sort of passion projects, I’ve always been a really avid reader and love books and love literature. And in taking this very long journey, it was kind of an opportunity for me to figure out how to bring some of my different joys and passions together. So outdoor adventure and natural history and biology.

I’m mostly an ornithologist by training, so got to see a lot of birds along the way. And then combined my love for books and writing and literature. And I think that sense of connection, I maybe wouldn’t have been able to identify that in advance as a purpose for writing. But it’s certainly why I read, you know, to feel heard and seen and in turn feel that sense of connection. I think as a writer, that’s probably been my biggest gift, too, is getting to connect with people, often across big distances and virtual spaces, but hopefully, sharing stories and the value of that.

Angie

Do you find that your mindset around writing your book was similar to your mindset on embarking on a big adventure?

Caroline

Yeah, I guess in some ways grit lit is the perfect sort of title for what I think it takes probably in both cases, just that abiding sense of persistence, as much as anything. I think that’s what makes so much possible. And I think whether it’s traveling 4000 miles, by human power, or many of the amazing things that folks in in the grit lit group have experienced themselves or writing a book, I would say the book in the end was harder than the journey. It’s often a question that I’ve asked is like, was the book harder? Or the plugging out those miles? And I would say, at least mentally, the book was harder in a don’t-give-up kind of sense. Because probably for those who’ve dabbled in writing or other artistic expressions, there are more no’s than yes’s almost without fail. And being able to take those no’s and do something productive with them, rather than just say, “Well, I guess this project wasn’t for me,” or, “I wasn’t meant to be a writer.” That’s been something that I have to often self coach or have friends who have enough experience in this world to say, “Well, just because it didn’t go the first time doesn’t mean it won’t eventually.”

There’s some sort of beauty in expedition style adventure, where really, at the end of the day, you just have to stay alive, right? It’s so simple, one foot in front of the other, just stay alive. But a book, it’s not just about staying alive. It’s about coming up with ideas and putting them in an order that makes sense and making sure other people like it, and other people will share it. So it is actually more complex than an expedition in some ways. And that makes sense to me that it would be harder.

Angie

Did you experience impostor syndrome with either of those — writing a book or 3000/4000 miles through Alaska?

Caroline

Yeah, I think it’s just an abiding theme for many of us in lots of different worlds. I certainly feel it in at times in the Adventure World. I remember, I went to the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival, and was presenting there and I was like stocked up with all these pretty hardcore NatGeo sponsored athletes. And Mark Twight was there talking about, you know, extreme climbing things. I had a little one [baby] at the time. And actually two little ones that I’d left at home and I thought, “I don’t know if I have any business being here,” but I think that’s the case also in science and then writing and there’s maybe a bit of safety in always feeling like you’re just one foot in the door. Because I’m like, “Oh, if I’m a writer, I’m actually really a scientist in my day job,” or, “If I’m Scientists and I know I have this whole other part of my life.” But I think when it comes down to it, that is a very common feeling. And the more that we can name it and call it out, probably the better for all of us. And I certainly found a lot of solidarity with other female writers and other moms and other people, you know, trying things that maybe are a little bit out of the normal box of what it looks like to hold many identities at once, which of course, we all do, but they’re not always all public.

Angie

Yeah, you usually see the summit selfie or the cool, “I just finished this 4000 mile long trek,” selfie and you don’t get to see all the blood and the sweat and the tears that we all share for sure. What’s it like being a mother who also prioritizes adventure, tell us about your sailing adventure? And are you doing that with your kids?

Caroline

I’m actually on a short hiatus right now back in Alaska, seeing family picking up ski gear and that sort of thing. But we started this trip in September in the Mediterranean actually in Greece and brought the boat up and out of the Mediterranean, dabbled with the bashing orcas along the Iberian Peninsula, then up the coast of Spain and Portugal, across the bay and went over to the UK. And now the boat is in Scotland. And the plan is to take off here in a couple of weeks and head up to Norway, hopefully catch some spring skiing and then spend the rest of the long season in the Arctic. So Iceland, Greenland, and places yet to be determined. We have an aluminum hauled kind of high latitudes sailboat. And part of the motivation for this trip is having kids and trying to figure out how to integrate the elements of adventure, and home. And now I’m also a teacher and trying to kind of write on the side. So bringing all those different things together. We have two kids who are seven and nine. So they’re getting to be more and more capable in their own right. But of course, they’re still kids. We’ll be hopefully sailing among icebergs and lots of wildlife and seeing spring migration happening, which I’m really excited about. That will be coming up next.

Angie

Can you see how your kids are changing already through time outdoors?

Caroline

Oh, yeah. And I think they’ve spent so much of their childhood, you know, half indoors, half outdoor outdoors, we’ve lived remotely a couple of years of their childhood so far. So we have a place that’s off grid and kind of off the road system from Haines, Alaska. And we spent a couple years out there with them. They’ve sailed a fair bit, came up the inside passage from Washington up to Southeast Alaska, so it’s not unfamiliar to them. But just to see their eyes wide open. I certainly have doubts. There’s an interesting, separate conversation, but the domestic labor of adventuring with the family, I think is not trivial. And some of those division of labor pieces come out in small spaces as well. But at times, I’ve had questions about like, is this worth it? Is this what we want to be doing as a family, but seeing the kids and how they’re getting a chance to take up so much of the natural world? And that whole idea of being bored, or I don’t know, this is not a thing, when you’re out in the world, I guess that sense of being present is seems to me like an incredible gift for all of us. And as much as we can cultivate that, for ourselves. And for kids. I think it really opens up that way of being in the world. It allows a different kind of learning.

Angie

Absolutely. How do you then get alone time when you’re out sailing with your husband and kids? You need to take care of your mental health and have your own passions, too. How do you balance that out there?

Caroline

Yeah, sometimes it’s something as simple as nightwatch when we’re sailing, these longer passages, somebody’s always got to be awake and on watch. And so sometimes, those periods where everyone else is asleep, that’s good thinking time. But sometimes they’re not relaxing at all. Not only thinking is adequate, keeping all the parts moving, and everybody where they need to be and safe and not keeled over too far and all that good stuff. There’s some of that I think that’s a challenge. And that’s something that as we move forward, we’re constantly negotiating, how do you find that I won’t even say -balance- because I think that’s kind of a misnomer. But how do you find that juggle so that the rewards, more or less, make all the sacrifices and the hard work worth it? And so for me, really having that space carved out for reading and for writing is so essential.

I’m taking leave from my research work in biology during this time, but I’m trying to incorporate writing in into my day to day life. And sometimes that’s a bigger challenge, then there’s exercise. And so getting creative, I think, with small spaces. And that means, you know, figuring out how to do a workout in a boat cockpit or just carving out that little bit of mental space and headphones, I think are a good thing. I don’t feel like I utilize them enough. But it’s my goal to do more of that moving forward. I think it’s a constant negotiation, at least in my experience, but we do a lot of land based time too. So that’s really how I like to be on a boat – you have passages or you’re making your way, but then ideally getting time to jump onto land and go exploring. And because the kids are getting bigger, hopefully we’ll do some backcountry skiing with them. They’re able to make their way up and down a slope now and some of that kind of stuff. So obviously scaled down. So that’s fun for everybody.

Angie

Do you mind sharing about your marriage? Clearly, it was built on adventure, right? If you went 4000 miles together, you’re sailing together? Do you have any tips for those of us who wants to live an adventurous life with a partner? And I’m sure you’re butting heads at times, and you disagree about a piece of gear versus the best route? Versus do we even want to do this adventure? What do we do, tell us the secrets.

Caroline

Well, I wish I had all those secrets. I don’t and I won’t pretend to. But I think just learning that communication is so central to everything, even somebody you’ve been with for a very long time that maybe you take for granted, that person can’t read your mind, or vice versa. And at times, there is that sort of mind meld. And other times there really isn’t. And so I think identifying what your own needs are, and maybe being explicit about, hey, this is what would really help me in this situation. And vice versa, you know, what is it that Pat, my husband, what does he need at a given time, and they may be wildly different, but I think just being able to communicate about that. And as much as possible, offering that little bit of alone time, even if the other person doesn’t necessarily think they need it or doesn’t ask for it. We all benefit from a little bit of mental space. And I think for us that ability to be active, is so critical. It’s not as easy as at home where you can just say, “Okay, go out for a run or go out for a ski.” But whatever that might look like, in different settings, is okay. Take the space or the time that is going to help get back into a better rhythm as a group.

For me, communication with other people sometimes during an adventure and being on a boat can be really isolating. And I’m learning that keeping up those channels of communication, whether it’s just a quick text or social media messenger, are things that I don’t normally do as much of but when you’re remote, it is just those quick little reaching out to other. For me, it’s especially girlfriends and having chickens, I think is a good way to find that perspective, when maybe the only people you talk to are related to you are married to you.

Obviously, it’s important to foster those relationships in your life of people you actually know. But as an author, you’re putting so much of your story out there to strangers to the world. And I have to say I’m like weirdly fascinated by customer reviews and comments on things. So I looked at your reviews on your book, because I was curious what other people were thinking of your adventure. And there was one where it was like, “I love this book. It was great. But there was one little detail that I just never saw her mentioned again, and maybe I missed it. So three stars.” And I was like, Are you kidding me? Why is it that people can just throw out three stars when they’re saying everything was great, except that there’s a missing comma or something. I’m curious as an author. And as somebody who’s clearly very intentional about the way you’re living and juggling all of these different things, how do you deal with those random strangers that have some sort of judgment on you that you don’t even know?

I guess if that was the overwhelming feedback I had gotten, and I didn’t have so many amazing and wonderful connections and people reaching out to me and these some of these magical, I’m trying to think of these moments of serendipity. Like one example is a woman who is this incredible researcher in her own right, I won’t name her name just for privacy, but essentially is one the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in sort of agriculture, in economics, and that we had the shared connection with a person had a really big influence on our lives, and I never would have met her had she not read the book and recognize this, this person who had mentioned in my kind of early adulthood and so there’s just so many of these little moments of connection that I think somebody’s commenting on. “Oh, hey, you know, I didn’t think you did this right,” or whatever. It really is much easier to have it sort of roll off my back. If it was, you know, some big New York Times reviewer, I won’t say that I’m immune to criticism, that maybe somebody thinks it’s just this sappy story about your personal trials or whatever. But in general, that’s not the feedback I’ve gotten.

I know that there’s certainly some experiences authors have where the commentary can be pretty devastating, and really personally hurtful. And I would say I haven’t had a whole lot of that. And the one exception was I wrote a piece for New York Times, actually it was my first kind of big article in a mainstream outlet like that, on sailing the Inside Passage with kids, and I had no idea how inflammatory parenting is, I thought, “Oh, I wrote this nice little story about my kids and our experiences we had coming up a body of water that I have all these other connections to and have done various kinds of trips on.” And I just think it’s a magical place. I’m talking about toddlers and dirty diapers and whatever managing that while on a boat. Oh, and the people who came out of the woodwork to tell me the terrible parent I was, and you’re all these different things. But that really caught me by surprise. I was like, “Oh, I guess I must have pushed a button and lots of people’s worlds.” So that that was probably the one experience I’ve had where I’ve had some pretty vicious feedback. And it was more eye opening, I think, than it was personally insulting because the things that they were pointing to, they didn’t feel relevant to my life. I don’t think that taking a kid on a boat is an insanely more hazardous thing than driving a kid down a freeway. They’re just different perceptions of risk. But it did make me think about that, and how we envision ourselves and our choices and our risk taking and all of those things, but it was more of an intellectual exercise. Personally, offensive one, I think those are two very different things. So I guess I’ve been fortunate that most of my feedback has been positive.

Angie

You add the words ‘with kids’ to the end of anything that yeah, you’re going to have to expect that 1000s of people will have an opinion. Or even being visibly pregnant. But you’ve seen firsthand the effect that all these adventures have had on your kids. It’s great to see more people getting out there and sharing their stories of doing just that.

Caroline

Yeah, yeah, certainly. And I think, you know, it’s all about being complicit to a point, although kids are pretty flexible, and where they think of his home, I think, is always moldable. But I would say that we’re fortunate in that. So far, they’ve been totally game and they see themselves as essential pieces of the adventure. They don’t think of themselves as tagalongs. They’re like, “Oh, yeah. When are we doing that?” Yeah, they think they’re as important in the process as we are. So that’s great.

Angie

Get them ready for Nightwatch.

Caroline

Yeah, exactly.

Angie

Great. Well, are you open to play a quick game of five rapid fire questions? What is one tip that you have for somebody who wants to write a book someday?

Caroline

I would just say, persistence, and maybe a strong pour of coffee or whiskey or whatever your beverage of choice.

Angie

Persistence and a good drink?

Caroline

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Angie

You start to feel stuck in the creative process. What is something that helps you get out of a funk?

Caroline

I think going outside is usually really helpful just to move and also talking to other writers or other creatives and benefiting from that sense of inspiration and community.

Angie

What is one word that describes how you feel when you are outside?

Caroline

Present?

Angie

What’s a dream adventure that you haven’t done yet that you’ve hoped to someday

Caroline

Sailing to Greenland is definitely high on the list right now, and hopefully will be happening in our semi near future. And I’m excited to bring the boat back to Alaska and check out a lot of the coastal areas I haven’t yet had the chance to see.

Angie

And what is one thing that you want youth girls to know about outdoor adventure?

Caroline

That it’s wide open, and not to be intimidated by the big, tough men that sort of paints our traditional picture of adventure that yeah, there’s a whole lot out there for everybody. And I encourage you to give it a try.

Angie

We will be following along with your adventures — many more to come and one of your dream ones to come very soon.

Caroline

Yeah, thanks so much. It was really nice to talk and I’m sure there’ll be other things that we can follow up on at some point.

Angie

By being a Grit Lit subscriber, you support outdoor learning and leadership for girls and women across the country. The Cairn Project is all about getting out to give back community connection and storytelling. So we hope you’ll share our mission with your community.