Through a series of accidents, most of them intentional, I once found myself alone on a sparsely populated island a little ways north of the 60th parallel. I had survived for a month on other people’s muesli, withered green peppers, and an occasional bean-and-macaroni pie, but I was none the worse for it. The almost interminable daylight filled me with a bustling chemical energy that made food seem irrelevant. And drink—drink felt like a thing intended for another species. Giddy from the subarctic summer, my brain was drunk almost constantly on salt and latitude. For a month almost nothing stronger than well water touched my tongue. A dram of whisky once at a school regatta. A perplexing glass of sake at an equally perplexing…