Wilderness Reading List

I am a huge fan of The Guardian book review and think this list will interest many of you. Phillip Connor (author of Fire Season: Field Notes from a Wilderness Lookout) has listed his top 10 wilderness books.

I've read Gary Snyder, John Fowles and Edward Abbey, but this list introduces me to new authors to explore. I place Annie Dillard, Terry Tempest Williams and Rachel Carson at the top of my natural history/outdoor reading list. But I'm always looking for more...

I would love to hear about your favorite wilderness reading. Please share your favorites in a comment.

Quote of the Day

Forest Park - Portland, OR (2009)

This one comes from one of the great outdoor reads of our time, A Walk in the Woods, courtesy of Bill Bryson.

“All the books tell you that if the grizzly comes for you, on no account should you run. This is the sort of advice you get from someone who is sitting at a keyboard when he gives it. Take it from me, if you are in an open space with no weapons and a grizzly comes for you, run. You may as well. If nothing else, it will give you something to do with the last seven seconds of your life."

Got Nature?

Great Falls National Park, VA (2010)

I'm about to begin reading Richard Louv's bestseller Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder, which argues that children need nature just as much as they need their vegetables and their playgrounds and their ABCs. It's an argument we hear more and more frequently and it doesn't apply just to children, particularly in our increasingly digital world.

In fact, there's a growing field of research into the effects of technology on our brains - on how technology affects the way we think and act - with special attention paid to the role nature might play in reversing those effects. In today's New York Times, Matt Richtel writes about a study undertaken by a group of neuroscientists who set out to explore this relationship during a week-long rafting trip on the San Juan River in Utah's Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.

Summer Reading List

Sawtooth Nat'l Forest, ID (2007)

For those of you looking for a good outdoor adventure read, try something off this list:

1) The Cactus Eaters: How I Lost My Mind - and Almost Found Myself - on the Pacific Crest Trail by Dan White

2) Indian Creek Chronicles: A Winter Alone in the Bitterroot Wilderness by Pete Fromm

3) Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why by Laurence Gonzales

4) Touching the Void by Joe Simpson

5) Never Cry Wolf by Farley Mowat

6) Undaunted Courage: Lewis and Clark and the American West by Stephen Ambrose

7) River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey by Candice Millard

8) Rocket Boys by Homer Hickham

9) Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

10) Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing

11) A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

What books do you recommend?

Faced with global warming, can wilderness remain natural?

For those who think of nature as a wild, unspoiled Eden that preserves the natural flora and fauna free from human interference, global warming has a nasty surprise in store. In his new book, "Heatstroke: Nature in an Age of Global Warming" (Island Press, 2009), Anthony Barnosky says that because of climate change, wilderness left to its own will no longer look like the natural areas we see today. Our conservation strategies must be rethought, he adds, because business-as-usual will not preserve all the aspects of nature we have come to know, love and respect.

Robert Sanders has an excellent review of Barnosky's book on the Internet.

Off the Wall

Winter is getting old in Flagstaff:

I'm ready for spring. While I'm waiting, keeping warm, I've been catching up on my reading. Off the Wall: Death in Yosemite is subtitled, "Gripping accounts of all known fatal mishaps in America's first protected land of scenic wonders." Written by Michael Ghiglieri and Butch Farabee, it's a cautionary, sobering read. It starts off with deaths in waterfalls (almost fifty people have been swept to their death), which sent shivers down my spine because I just did a trip in Yosemite last June.

We were camped near a huge waterfall of raging, thunderous water where one false move could have ended tragically. Not having read this book yet, I was mercifully less aware how easily one of us could have slipped on the smooth (and often wet), slippery granite that makes up the backcountry of Yosemite.

Besides waterfalls, the book describes deaths due to snow, downed aircraft, falls while hiking and scrambling, vehicular mishaps, climbing (fewer died in climbing than in hiking and scrambling accidents), drowning, flora and fauna (stay away from horses)(and no, no one has been killed by a bear in Yosemite, ever), freak accidents and getting lost. In all, from 1851 through 2006, there were 765 traumatic deaths in the Park. This includes 29 park builders (O'Shaunessy dam was big here).

Reading about all these mishaps, many of them in great detail, reminds me how tenuous our hold is on life -- there are many ways to die; lots of them very sudden. Lots caused by simple bad luck.

But many teach lessons about planning, being prepared, being willing to bail when the weather changes, being attentive to your surroundings and knowing what to do when things start going wrong (keeping your head about you). These are lessons that can be easily forgotten -- lessons that need to be revisted often when you have a life with lots of adventure.

At the same time, we have to remember that life is fatal. None of us will get out of here alive. People die everyday in accidents around their houses. Football players die (and are horribly injured) every year. People pay big bucks to die on Everest. Planes fall on houses (thankfully very infrequently).

If we are lucky, we continue to pursue the things that interest us. For me, it's getting outside into nature, away from the throngs and noise and stuff. I will accept that my life has risks, and that I need to pay attention.

And continue to learn the lessons taught by the experiences of others. This summer, when I'm in Yosemite camped near those beautiful (raging) waterfalls, I'll remind the group about what could happen in a moment of inattention...