"In this second volume of the trilogy, we meet Dag again, who is now slightly older. He is now Old-Dag. His son, Young-Dag, is married off to Adelheid Barre, an officer's daughter, something her urban office-holding family is not immediately thrilled about. But Old-Dag makes a grand impression on them at the wedding, and the objectors fall silent. Adelheid's life at the farm is different than she expected. Her marriage is especially difficult to comprehend. She grows close to Old-Dag, and finds much joy in his company and in long and deep conversations with him. Young-Dag is in many ways a stranger both to her and the family. A tragedy prompts him to run away from the farm, into the woods - all the way to Death Mountain. From there, nobody returns. But he does anyway, and the experiences become a turning point in the relationship between Young-Dag and Adelheid. The trilogy: Beyond Sing the Woods No Way Around"--Goodreads
Now completely updated and revised with new color photos and topos, this guidebook is the ultimate resource to technical climbing routes, hiking trails, and peak-bagging routes in Wyoming's Wind River Range, a popular playground for backcountry enthusiasts and alpine rock climbers. More than 200 new climbing routes have been completed in the Wind Rivers since this book was last published in 1994, and this guide is the only comprehensive collection of information available to climbers. Includes hiking and climbing information for these areas: Ross LakesGreen RiverDinwoody GlacierPeak LakeTitcomb BasinAlpine LakesMiddle Fork LakeEast Fork ValleyBaptiste LakeCirque of the TowersDeep LakeSouth Pass
Famed naturalist John Muir (1838-1914) came to Wisconsin as a boy and studied at the University of Wisconsin. He first came to California in 1868 and devoted six years to the study of the Yosemite Valley. After work in Nevada, Utah, and Colorado, he returned to California in 1880 and made the state his home. One of the heroes of America's conservation movement, Muir deserves much of the credit for making the Yosemite Valley a protected national park and for alerting Americans to the need to protect this and other natural wonders. The mountains of California (1894) is his book length tribute to the beauties of the Sierras. He recounts not only his own journeys by foot through the mountains, glaciers, forests, and valleys, but also the geological and natural history of the region, ranging from the history of glaciers, the patterns of tree growth, and the daily life of animals and insects. While Yosemite naturally receives great attention, Muir also expounds on less well known beauty spots.
When Dr Ben Givens left his Seattle home he never intended to return. It was to be a journey past snow-covered mountains to a place of canyons, sagelands and orchards, where, on the verges of the Columbia River, Ben had entered the world and would now take his leave of it.
For every woman who has ever been called outdoorsy comes a collection of stories that inspires unforgettable adventure. Beautiful, empowering, and exhilarating, She Explores is a spirited celebration of female bravery and courage, and an inspirational companion for any woman who wants to travel the world on her own terms. Combining breathtaking travel photography with compelling personal narratives, She Explores shares the stories of 40 diverse women on unforgettable journeys in nature: women who live out of vans, trucks, and vintage trailers, hiking the wild, cooking meals over campfires, and sleeping under the stars. Women biking through the countryside, embarking on an unknown road trip, or backpacking through the outdoors with their young children in tow. Complementing the narratives are practical tips and advice for women planning their own trips, including: • Preparing for a solo hike • Must-haves for a road-trip kitchen • Planning ahead for unknown territory • Telling your own story A visually stunning and emotionally satisfying collection for any woman craving new landscapes and adventure.
Part natural history, part poetry, Mountains of the Heart is full of hidden gems and less traveled parts of the Appalachian Mountains Stretching almost unbroken from Alabama to Belle Isle, Newfoundland, the Appalachians are one of the oldest mountain ranges in the world. In Mountains of the Heart, renowned author and avid naturalist Scott Weidensaul shows how geology, ecology, climate, evolution, and 500 million years of history have shaped one of the continent's greatest landscapes into an ecosystem of unmatched beauty. This edition celebrates the book's 20th anniversary of publication and includes a new foreword from the author.
The International Bestseller New York Times Editors’ Choice SelectionWinner of the 2020 Lannan Literary Awards Fellowship "[An] absorbing, stirring novel . . . that, in more than one sense, remedies history." —The New York Times Book Review “A triumph, a novelistic rendition of one of the most difficult times in Vietnamese history . . . Vast in scope and intimate in its telling . . . Moving and riveting.” —VIET THANH NGUYEN, author of The Sympathizer, winner of the Pulitzer Prize With the epic sweep of Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko or Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing and the lyrical beauty of Vaddey Ratner’s In the Shadow of the Banyan, The Mountains Sing tells an enveloping, multigenerational tale of the Trần family, set against the backdrop of the Việt Nam War. Trần Diệu Lan, who was born in 1920, was forced to flee her family farm with her six children during the Land Reform as the Communist government rose in the North. Years later in Hà Nội, her young granddaughter, Hương, comes of age as her parents and uncles head off down the Hồ Chí Minh Trail to fight in a conflict that tore apart not just her beloved country, but also her family. Vivid, gripping, and steeped in the language and traditions of Việt Nam, The Mountains Sing brings to life the human costs of this conflict from the point of view of the Vietnamese people themselves, while showing us the true power of kindness and hope. The Mountains Sing is celebrated Vietnamese poet Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai’s first novel in English.
While John McPhee was working on his previous book, Rising from the Plains, he happened to walk by the engineering building at the University of Wyoming, where words etched in limestone said: "Strive on--the control of Nature is won, not given." In the morning sunlight, that central phrase--"the control of nature"--seemed to sparkle with unintended ambiguity. Bilateral, symmetrical, it could with equal speed travel in opposite directions. For some years, he had been planning a book about places in the world where people have been engaged in all-out battles with nature, about (in the words of the book itself) "any struggle against natural forces--heroic or venal, rash or well advised--when human beings conscript themselves to fight against the earth, to take what is not given, to rout the destroying enemy, to surround the base of Mt. Olympus demanding and expecting the surrender of the gods." His interest had first been sparked when he went into the Atchafalaya--the largest river swamp in North America--and had learned that virtually all of its waters were metered and rationed by a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' project called Old River Control. In the natural cycles of the Mississippi's deltaic plain, the time had come for the Mississippi to change course, to shift its mouth more than a hundred miles and go down the Atchafalaya, one of its distributary branches. The United States could not afford that--for New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and all the industries that lie between would be cut off from river commerce with the rest of the nation. At a place called Old River, the Corps therefore had built a great fortress--part dam, part valve--to restrain the flow of the Atchafalaya and compel the Mississippi to stay where it is. In Iceland, in 1973, an island split open without warning and huge volumes of lava began moving in the direction of a harbor scarcely half a mile away. It was not only Iceland's premier fishing port (accounting for a large percentage of Iceland's export economy) but it was also the only harbor along the nation's southern coast. As the lava threatened to fill the harbor and wipe it out, a physicist named Thorbjorn Sigurgeirsson suggested a way to fight against the flowing red rock--initiating an all-out endeavor unique in human history. On the big island of Hawaii, one of the world's two must eruptive hot spots, people are not unmindful of the Icelandic example. McPhee went to Hawaii to talk with them and to walk beside the edges of a molten lake and incandescent rivers. Some of the more expensive real estate in Los Angeles is up against mountains that are rising and disintegrating as rapidly as any in the world. After a complex coincidence of natural events, boulders will flow out of these mountains like fish eggs, mixed with mud, sand, and smaller rocks in a cascading mass known as debris flow. Plucking up trees and cars, bursting through doors and windows, filling up houses to their eaves, debris flows threaten the lives of people living in and near Los Angeles' famous canyons. At extraordinary expense the city has built a hundred and fifty stadium-like basins in a daring effort to catch the debris. Taking us deep into these contested territories, McPhee details the strategies and tactics through which people attempt to control nature. Most striking in his vivid depiction of the main contestants: nature in complex and awesome guises, and those who would attempt to wrest control from her--stubborn, often ingenious, and always arresting characters.
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year Winner of the Mountains and Plains Book Seller's Association Award "Sprawling in scope. . . . Mr. Egan uses the past powerfully to explain and give dimension to the present." --The New York Times "Fine reportage . . . honed and polished until it reads more like literature than journalism." --Los Angeles Times "They have tried to tame it, shave it, fence it, cut it, dam it, drain it, nuke it, poison it, pave it, and subdivide it," writes Timothy Egan of the West; still, "this region's hold on the American character has never seemed stronger." In this colorful and revealing journey through the eleven states west of the 100th meridian, Egan, a third-generation westerner, evokes a lovely and troubled country where land is religion and the holy war between preservers and possessors never ends. Egan leads us on an unconventional, freewheeling tour: from America's oldest continuously inhabited community, the Ancoma Pueblo in New Mexico, to the high kitsch of Lake Havasu City, Arizona, where London Bridge has been painstakingly rebuilt stone by stone; from the fragile beauty of Idaho's Bitterroot Range to the gross excess of Las Vegas, a city built as though in defiance of its arid environment. In a unique blend of travel writing, historical reflection, and passionate polemic, Egan has produced a moving study of the West: how it became what it is, and where it is going. "The writing is simply wonderful. From the opening paragraph, Egan seduces the reader. . . . Entertaining, thought provoking." --The Arizona Daily Star Weekly "A western breeziness and love of open spaces shines through Lasso the Wind. . . . The writing is simple and evocative." --The Economist
