Travelogue Books

One of my experiences as a biologist for the U.S. Forest Service was a brief stint in Libby, Montana where I was a weekend visitor to the remote Yaak Valley championed by resident conservationist Rick Bass. My first pass through the valley was a shock. The sea of clearcuts from past timber sales were clearly alarming, and I vowed to return for further investigation. In 1994 I studied fish populations in the Libby area now, and then, a superfund site at the plywood mill where we installed a fish weir in an attempt locate the last remaining Bull trout, now an endangered species in the Pacific Northwest. The previous year there were two. In 1994 none returned to the Libby trap. Similar conditions exist on the Yaak River, a major tributary to the Kootenai. Though superficially "wild" in outward apearance this is devastated landscape due to economic activity that has ruined the landscape and the citizenry from asbestosis at the other superfund site, a vermiculite mine once operated by W.R. Grace Corporation of "A Civil Action" fame. They are gone now, but so is everything else the area once offered. "We don't mind looking at the clearcuts," my boss a dour wildlife biologist told me. It is a legacy that Mr. Bass will be hard pressed to reverse with the current forest management leadership. But we must try. I stand with him in that battle. The chapter in my book "Against a Strong Current," is called "Three Bull Trout."

A valuable collection of diverse voices bearing witness to the last of the last: a small but ecologically rich valley in the far northwest corner of Montana. Those familiar with the prolific writings (and rantings) of Yaak resident Rick Bass know that he can come off as a monomaniac, but this anthology proves his passion is grounded and infectious. Great contributions from prominent writers, poets, conservationists, biologists, politicians, and local residents provide a mosaic of visions on the endangered magic that is the Yaak. The primary lesson: the Yaak is a biological, not a recreational wilderness. It is a place that must be saved, not for your next summer vacation, but for the itinerent wolves, the few remaining stands of ancient larch, the inland redband trout, the resident horse loggers, 15 modest-sized 'gardens' of unroaded national forest, and a tiny (perhaps single digit)population of super-survivor grizzly bears.
Once gone, they are gone forever.

Yet another anthology from John Long, however, this time it's all his own stuff, which is infinitely better than a collection of other writers. This includes some fiction, based on fact, and fact. Some stuff is repeated here from his previous books and instructional rock climbing guides. Surprise! `Green Arch' again. This does, however, still has enough new stuff to keep any John Long fan happy. His fiction I haven't seen anywhere else and it is very good. Overall, next to `Rock Rats,' his best book.

This is my favorite book,and possibly Long's best (ROCK JOCKS... is more factual and interesting but less entertaining.) This collection of Long's short stories, drawn from his incredible personal experiences, is creative, adventurous, and riveting as ever, but here he has truly perfected his writing style which flows seemlessly. "My Friend Phil" is worth the purchase price alone, and is the roaring gut laugh til you are crying funniest prose in the history of the english language. Any outdoors person with a pulse must own this book!

All of Patrick Leigh Fermor's books are of an unusual beauty, but this is without doubt the most beautiful of all. But the author is not for just anyone. I have a friend who bought Roumeli and got only ten pages into it before deciding she didn't like it. But there are reasons for that. She has a journalism background and she lives in New York. Appreciating Leigh Fermor involves taking the time to savor elevated language and imagery emanating from several sometimes unfamiliar realms of meaning. Sorry, folks, but the dumbing down process stops here.
In the first chapter we have a description of the author's travels in Trace and in particular the area around Alexandroupolis, which, interestingly, is named for the Russian Czar Alexander II and not for Alexander the Great. The focus here is the people he calls The Black Departers, or the Sarakatsans, a mysterious and little-studies nomadic group who some say are descendants of the original Greeks who came into the peninsula.
Then there is a delightful chapter centered on the monasteries of Meteora and the holy but realistic Father Christopher, the abbot of St. Barlaam, who has a few tales to tell about the foreign occupiers and their mindless cruelty and how the monks outsmarted them on a few occasions.
Chapter three deals with the famous difference between Hellenes and Greeks (or Romios) that has been used as an analytic model by many serious writers who take an interest in modern Greece, including Robert D. Kaplan in his Balkan Ghosts. This is the division or polarity existing within every Greek you meet on the streets and it shows the distinct pulls of the Eastern and Western orientations that still abide in the Greek collective consciousness and which give, sometimes, the impression of a split personality. Mention is made of George Soteriades the archeologist who insisted that Romios should be used only in the pejorative sense of a mean, vulgar, and sordid man. But the word has also had its very distinguished defenders.
Also worth noting is the fact that this book contains the very elegant and entertaining essay called Sounds of the Greek World, of which I cannot resist giving a few examples here:

Chios is a cakewalk on a cottage piano. ....Hermoupolis is the filioque. .....The Plaka is a drunken polyphony at four in the morning in praise of retsina and the tune of a music- box perched on a photograph album of faded plum velvet with filigree clasps at five in the afternoon.

Yes, this book is beautiful. Take the time to read and enjoy it.

Patrick Leigh Fermor's Roumeli gives us a glimpse at many ancient customs of Greece that were still practiced at the time of writing. His book is a must read for any one intrested in Greece

I truly enjoyed this book. Althoughthe subject matter is definately masculine, there is a soft, gentle, beguiling thread running through all of the stories. The decsriptive images will stay with me for many years. I never thought of seeing a 'splash of dust' but I understood exactly what was happening.

I read it in 2 days.. I conclude how boring the 9-5 world really is. This man has live a passionate, scary and fullfilling if not fruitful life. Very enjoyable.

During those inbetween times when I am unable to travel myself (woe is me), then I travel on a vehicle of words - and oh, how satisfactory is this one! McLennan is new to writing, or so he claims at the opening of this book, but I struggle to believe it. He tells of moving to Estonia with his Dutch wife (she surely has courage to marry such a wanderlusting man), a writer, and when he struggles with boredom, she encourages him to put his snappy stories to the written page - and this is the result.

If he's not practiced, he certainly is gifted. A comparison made by a Granta reviewer (under the publisher's umbrella, but I'm not arguing) to Hemingway is not unwarranted. McLennan's travel stories are filled to bursting with male bravado, much like Papa's, and he knows how to write spare when needed, spiced when it serves, lavish when the story requires it. "Rowing" is nearly impossible to put down, if only to eye the road oneself.

McLennan comes from Australia, but calls the world, the road, his home. The title story is probably my personal favorite, if only because good-sized chunks of my own wanderlusting heart still reside in Alaska, haunted by my own memories which he so well brought to life again. It is a tale of two men rowing 1,000 miles from Seattle to Alaska, and if the author wasn't sworn to lifelong adventure seeking before then, he was by the time he completed this journey.

McLennan writes (in no particular order, in 15 travel essays) about a long list of improbable jobs (bank clerk, gold panner, boat skipper, bartender, wild pig hunter) and places he has experienced by full immersion: Australia, Costa Rica, Pacific Northwest, Nicarauga, London, France, Spain, Estonia. His rich language brings to life great adventure without arrogance (well, maybe a little, in his belt notching adventures with the opposite gender), not sparing himself or anyone else in his path an honest and colorful appraisal. He takes on dangerous expeditions as if it never occurred to him not to do so, not a question or hesitancy in his mind, and travel becomes his rites of passage into finding purpose outside the routine everyday too many rest of us accept.

"Rowing to Alaska" itches beneath the skin and hammers in the heart for anyone who wants something more out of life - in either the living of it or even just the reading about it.

On first glimpse of Sharlene "Charlie" Minshall she does not strike you as an adventurer. It's hard to imagine this five foot three inch lady maneuvering a 27-foot box-on-wheels down a narrow winding dirt road in Hell's Canyon in July or sloshing through the slushy snow of backroads in Nova Scotia. Except for her flowing silver mane, she looks quite ordinary. But ordinary is not a word you would choose to describe Charlie's RV adventures. Charlie's been to every US state and Canadian province and seventeen of Mexico's states. This feat is made all the more remarkable when you learn that she has traveled to these far corners of North America alone, just she and her motorhome, which has now accumulated over 250,000 miles.
She writes in the Introduction, "My travels have included romance, intrigue, sorrow, general happiness, and a great many terrific `Moments in time.' I've stayed healthy and made a lot of friends along the way. This `second life' as a fulltime RVer has taken this average housewife and mother beyond her wildest imagination."
One of the more appealing aspects of Charlie's book is the relaxed conversational writing style. She makes you feel right from page one that you are sitting around the campfire or sharing an early morning cup of coffee with a friend. If you want to get a good idea about the RV lifestyle beyond the ordinary hook-up campgrounds, Charlie's book is the one to read.

Caution! Reading this book could be detrimental to your sedate lifestyle. When you realize these adventures, so eloquently recorded, were experienced by a 60-ish grandmother, who pilots her motorhome to the far corners and borders of this great country, you begin to ask yourself, Why not me? And that's a fair question.

Widowed at 45 and not sure what to do next, "Charlie" Minshall discovered she had a serious wanderlust to satisfy. So she became a full-time RVer, logging well over 200,000 miles onto her personal odometer. And, oh yes, along the way, she just happens to have written six books, this being the latest.

As you digest the chapters, Charlie takes you on guided tours that include some of the most beautiful and scenic treasures of this country--from the Grand Canyon to Yosemite National Park to Hell's Canyon in Idaho and then on to New England and the Maritime provinces in Canada. And for some real contrast, she provides a peek at the Hearst Castle in California and later explores another great house, the Chaco pueblos in New Mexico. She also gears up for some major excitement when she describes paragliding in Aspen and more recently as she goes searching for polar bears from a tundra buggy near the Hudson Bay in Canada.

RVing Adventures with the Silver Gypsy is the kind of book that makes you want to reconsider where you are going, especially if slowly wandering along paths less taken and exploring the far reaches fits your style of travel. Minshall's books can be quite compelling--in fact, you may just take the question, Why not me? and turn in into the statement, Me, too!

For over a period of 30 years this Englishman has "regularly dropped my ordinary routine and gone walkabout in remote and untamed regions of the world, or taken myself off along some pilgrimage route that aims at the heart of one of the world's great spiritual traditions." Because I have been unable and often unwilling to do that, Housden's spiritual quests are as compelling a read as I have found in the "spiritual" book category. From St. Catherine's in the Sinai (one of my favorites) to St. John the Divine cathedral in NYC, his adventures touch the heart, the soul and the funny bone. Read it and give it away to your friends, which is what I did for Christmas.

This is more for the adults than something I would share with my children. It has some fastinating insights as to how we treat eachother on a daily basis, what we take for granted and what we expect of eachother. I read it twice to be sure and gather all the information in and was surprised at what I had missed the first time around. I have told several of my friends about this book and have perchased it for a close dear one as well. This is a must read for anyone looking for the "self" and thinking it's in far away places. It's only as far as your heart and mind, as far as you allow it to be.

Stephen Alter's marvelous book is reminiscent of fine nineteenth century travel writing in which the writer, in lucid, and sometimes poetic, style brings the reader with him to see and experience things most people never would otherwise. His credentials are impeccable: the son of missionaries who was raised in northern India, fluent in Hindi and conversant in other Indian languages and possessed of an encyclopedic knowledge of the flora and fauna of the region. A non believer, he traces the steps of an ancient pilgrimage, feeling the spiritual attraction of the place while wryly commenting on the religious hypocrisy he encounters along the way. For all of its gifts it is the writing that commends this fine book. For the author's wise and seasoned view of the world and understatement of the rigors of his journey I would compare it to Bruce Chatwin's, In Patagonia.

Surprisingly, there exist very few good books on the rich myths, and natural history of the hill districts of Garhwal and Kumaon. Till date probably the best known figure from the region is Jim Corbett of the "Man Eaters of Kumaon" fame.

Stephen Alter's latest book titled, "Sacred Waters," is a beautifully written narrative of his journey to the sources of River Ganga (or Ganges) in the Garhwal Himalayas. For the Hindus, the Ganga is a sacred river.

Alter's book is a welcome addition to the few goods books that exist about this region. The book is a wonderful introduction to understanding the history of the region, and the central place the River Ganga occupies for many Indians.

The book is an interesting mix of natural history, myths and Alter's own personal experience of River Ganga, whose source is hidden in the beautiful and rugged mountains of Garhwal, often called as "Dev Bhoomi," - the land of the gods. Alter paints a fascinating picture of the changing moods and nature of the river as it bursts from the mountains and courses down to the dusty Gangetic plains, and into the ocean.

Alter is a second generation Pahari-American, who was born and brought up in the hills of Uttaranchal. Pahari means someone from the mountain in Hindi.

It has been a long while since I followed up on my childhood obsession with pioneer stories, but while reading this I was back in the covered wagon facing the hardships: massacres, thirst, insects, snakes, wayward and stubborn pack animals, terrain that seemed more like a blockade than a "trail." The Beards were an indomitable pair who travelled the route from their home on the West Coast (the end of the Oregon Trail) to its origin in Independence, MO. And they did it after 40 years of a marriage during which they had dreamed and planned for this near-pilgrimmage. It isn't just the great descriptions of the land and people they encountered along the way, but their awe and reverence. I don't think that "respect" is a bad way to put it: the reader here is in the presence of a mensch (if one can get away with calling a Presbyterian minister that). I saw every landmark filtered through the clear light of Beard's mind, philosophy and sensitivity.

This book is indeed a classic. Beard's conversational narratives and word pictures are a fast read with unparalleled clarity and excitement. A student of Western history, Beard adds numerous, historical accounts of other writers and conversations with locals met along the way that either lived or knew about the "old days." Hardship and triumph defined the Oregon Trail in the mid-19th century, and the Beards tasted both. Who better to appreciate these extremes than a Chaplain assigned to a U.S. Army unit in France during World War One and the long-time pastor of Mount Tabor Presbyterian Church in Portland, Oregon. Ride with the Beards through rivers, deserts, mountains and plains sprinkled with sunshine, rain, snow, sleet, wind and sand storms. The Beards were friends of three generations of my family. The last time I saw them was in 1947, the year before they took their saddles East. Readers will not be disappointed with this riveting, first-hand account of a trip first dreamed of when Chaplain Beard was a boy.

Sailing Away from Winter


After reading the first page of Sailing Away From Winter I immediately realized that I had forgotten what a good writer Silver Donald Cameron is. Unlike many sailing adventure books, Cameron shies away from writing a glorified log book but rather makes the reader feel that he is in the cockpit of "Magnus" and experiences the joys of sailing in a fair wind on a sunny day to the unending frustration of a finicky and somewhat unreliable diesel engine that is maintained by a bilge dwelling scurvy crew of evil Norwegian trolls.

While slipping southwards from his homeport of D'Escousse, Silver Donald makes port in such historic Nova Scotia locales as Canso, Halifax, Lunenburg and Yarmouth and then onward to crossing the Bay of Fundy and entering our "beloved" neighbour, the United States of America. Here we learn that like most Canadians, not many Americans on the New England Coast are fans of President George W. Bush as evidenced by many bumper stickers "Needed: One florist to send two Bushes to Iraq"

One common thread in Cameron's many works is his love affair with Cape Breton. During the entire southward voyage Magnus pursues long time friend and fellow Cape Bretoner's Jim and Carol-Anne Organ, of Port Hawkesbury, aboard Seaduction. In the Abaco's the crews of the two Cape Breton vessels rendezvous and share many colourful yarns after cruising more than 3000 miles away from their beloved island. If there's one thing about Cape Bretoner's as the song goes "One thing I know wherever I go there's always friends from back home".

From a sailor's perspective I found that Sailing Away From Winter can be used as a reference book for those of us planning to navigate the Intracoastal Waterway while keeping company with the family pet, a travel guide of good marinas along the ICW, and maybe most importantly a guide for diesel engine repair. As any seasoned cruiser knows: The sailing is the easy part of the cruise, it's knowing how to fix things that really count. Well done Captain.

"Sailing Away From Winter: A Cruise From Nova Scotia to Florida and Beyond" is the true-life memoir of Canadian columnist Silver Donald Cameron, who dared to make his dreams of a sea voyage come true. With his wife and their beloved dog, he traveled more than three thousand nautical miles in 236 days, visiting towns dotting the coast from Nova Scotia to Florida, crossing the Gulf Stream, experiencing the Bahamas, and much more. A vividly detailed recounting of the joys and perils of navigating the ocean in an aged Norwegian-built ketch, the camaraderie shared with other cruisers, and much more. Highly recommended.

I have only just finished reading this wonderful book about Henry Shukman's journeys in New Mexico.My own imagination would take over as i took in all the fascinating landscapes,people and places that the author was sharing with me.Indians and artists,shacks and glorious views from the middle of no-where...The author came across as sensitive and although at times he would feel pulled by fond memories of England,his passion for where he was there and then was so obvious.I now have a passionate dream of my own. To go and search out these places for myself and be inspired by all they have to offer..

The writings of the author left a deep impression on me. He writes with a very romantic, extremely descriptive style that allows you to feel what he saw. I lived in NM for 3 years and after reading the book was ready to go back. Mr Shukman did such a great job detailing his journey. He described many of the places I remember from there. I found myself nostalgic for the Southwest. He did such a good job, that I was ready to go back because I wanted to visit some of the places that I had never gone to when I had the opportunity. After you read the book, if you've never been to the Southwest you too will be ready to pack your bags!!!