Tahoe Talbot Washburn first visited the Arctic in 1938 with her graduate student husband, Lincoln. The journals she kept of their adventures over the next three years - written in tents and snow houses, at missions and Hudson's Bay Company posts - form the basis for Under Polaris.

The Washburns traveled the coastal areas of Victoria and King William Islands, learning to deal with close calls aboard boats while struggling to keep from colliding with ice floes, running aground in icy fog, or drifting helplessly out into open water. They learned to travel by dog team, even through blinding snow storms. And they learned how to hunt and fish for food for themselves and their dogs.

They came to value greatly the help and companionship of the people who became part of their lives, whether they were Inuit, Hudson's Bay Company employees, Canadian government workers, Catholic and Anglican missionaries, or the remarkable pilots of the single engine planes that got them to their destinations.

Washburn made a concerted effort to learn the survival skills of the Inuit women and to understand their lives. She tells of their patience and gentle amusement as they helped her, their curiosity about her way of life, and their generosity in sharing meager resources.