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The section on travel and adventure has quite
a few selections. I hope you will peruse through the
choices. When I was growing up I was fascinated by science
and tales of exploration. I had dog-eared copies of various
Golden Guides to trees, flowers, rocks, etc. all coauthored
by Herbert Zim. I watched television filled with stories of
"The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau" and
Marlin Perkins and Mutual of Omaha's "Wild
Kingdom." The space program was in full swing and we
had the feeling there was a future for mankind in space. In
second grade or so I had a book on outer space and I had the
diameters,
distance form the sun, and periods for all the planets
memorized. Theseselections reflect my taste for tales of
exploration. I favor first hand accounts by the people
actually involved in these adventures. I have many of these
on my bookshelf, have read others, and some just look really
interesting and are ones I want to read.
One book on the list is "Search for a Living
Fossil." It is a book aimed for juvenile, but worth
including. It is a story of a woman named Lattimer who ran a
small museum in South Africa. She was searching through junk
fish brought up in fishermen's nets to mount for in the
museum when she found an unusual fish gasping for breath...
It turns out this was a coelacanth, a type thought extinct
for 70 million years. The story continues the the quest to
find more specimens. Another book I remember fondly talked
about an expedition to the Gobi Desert in Mongolia to search
for dinosaur bones, On this trip they found a nest
with dinosaur eggs- the first ever found. Some of the eggs
contained tiny skeletons. These were of a new species of
dinosaur - the protoceratops, an ancestor of the more flashy
triceratops. I could not
locate a title that sounded familiar, but the book Dragon
Hunter recounts these explorations by researcher Roy Chapman
Andrews.
I have selected four books dealing with exploration of the
poles. Of the major figures I have books by Roald Amundsen -
the first man to reach the south pole, Ernest Shackelton and
his remarkable tale of
endurance after his ship became frozen in the antarctic ice,
and of course I included the Journals of Robert Falcon
Scott. "The Worst Journey in the World" is another
account of explorations with Scott. The north pole
expeditions are not entirely ignored, but are represented by
an unusual character Ralph Plaisted. Mr. Plaisted organized
in the 1970's a snowmobile expedition to the north pole. The
story is told by Charles Kuralt - To the Top of the World -
an on and off member of these expeditions. One amusing point
is that Plaisted wrote to various companies looking for
sponsors. One of the few that signed on was Knorr Soup - he
comments they ate plenty of soup in the expedition
preparations.
The world under the ocean is included. First is the major
icon of undersea exploration - Jacques Cousteau in his book
"The Silent World." This is an account of the
development and early explorations with his
SCUBA (Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus) or
aqualung (not the Jethro Tull album). Other accounts are of
the early explorations of the deep sea by William Beebe
using a bathysphere. Think of a riding small heavy steel
sphere with tiny glass portals as it was lowered by a thin
steel cable a half mile down into crushing depths, in total
blackness, and ice cold water. These were the first views
ever of deep
sea creatures in their own environment. These accounts were
featured in National Geographic Magazine - there are two
books retelling this, first is "Descent" and the
second in "Adventuring with Beebe" by Beebe
himself. "Eternal Darkness" talks of explorations
by Robert Ballard in the bathyscaphe - essentially a
bathysphere with a superstructure that allowed it to be a
self contained submarine capable of going up and down and
some lateral movement. "Seven Miles Down" recounts
the exploration of the Mariana's Trench the deepest point in
the sea by the bathyscape.
At the other extreme of the earth are tales of mountain
climbing. First and foremost is "View from the
Summit" by Edmund Hillary. "The crystal
Horizon" by Reinhold Messner recounts his solo ascent
of Everest. Messner was an iconic and controversial figure
in the world of climbing. He was a brilliant rock climber
and mountain climber admired for his daring and skill. He
was part of the first group to ever ascend
Everest without oxygen. On the other hand he was viewed by
many as selfish, reckless, and difficult. "Into Thin
Air" is an account of disaster on Mount Everest.
"Where the Mountain Casts It Shadow" is subtitled the dark side of extreme adventure. Maria Coffey
examines the psychological and emotional side of extreme
adventurers and that of their family members. The final
mountain climbing book on the list is
"Touching the Void" a tale of exploration in the
Andes. Two climbers high in the Andes - one breaks his leg.
Working together they manage to descend to 3,000 feet. Then
the injured climber falls over a lip. He
can't climb back up his partner can't pull him back up the
lip. As the second is slowly being pulled off the ledge, he
makes a unthinkable decision. He cuts the rope. I did not
read this book, but I saw both
of the men appear on Oprah.
Cave exploration is represented by three books. The Cave
beyond- story of the 1956 Floyd Collins Crystal Cave
Expedition - then the longest cave in the world in the ridge
north of Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. The second continues this
story with "The Longest Cave" the story of finding
the long sought connection between the Mammoth Cave System
and the Floyd Collins System. These books are the best
stories of cave exploration ever written - National
Geographic is wrong. I have been in these cave exploring
with the authors Red Watson and Roger Brucker. The third is
a tale of the exploration of "The Jewel Cave
Adventure" a National Monument in the Black
Hills - over 70 miles of maze passage
mapped by husband and wife team Herb and Jan Conn.
Hiking is represented by "The Man Who Walked Through
Time" by Collin Fltecher, the father of backpacking in
this country in a story of a hike the length of the Grand
Canyon below the rim. John Muir is represented twice in
"My First Summer in the Sierra" and "A
Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf." A more recent account
is Bill Bryson's "A Walk in the Woods" a
brilliantly written tale of Bryson's walk along with an
overweight Friend along much of the Appalachian Trail.
Strongly recommended.
I have explorations of the American west. "The Journals
of Lewis and Clark' from the Mississippi River to the
pacific coast through unexplored territory - one of the
great tales of all time. This is matched by
"Explorations of the Colorado River" by John
Wesley Powell. They took longboats down the Colorado
River rapids, before they were tamed by the Hoover Dam.
There is George Caitlan's description of the
"Manners and Customs Native American Indians."
This is the most detailed and best account of these Native
American culture written by an outsider. As a counterpoint
or perhaps karma I have included a book I am currently
reading by a native American William Least Heat-Moon
entitled "Blue Highways" He lost his teaching
position, went through a divorce and decided to explore the
blue highways of America - roads that are not interstates
while living in his van "Ghost dancer". It is a
tale of an exploration of American culture and an
exploration of himself. In the same vein is "On the
Road" by Charles Kuralt, a noted reporter and a one
time staple on television with his weekly "On the
Road" features.
Exploration in Africa - The dark continent are highlighted
by Sir Richard Burton's (not the actor) "First
Footsteps in East Africa" Burton was the first European
to see Victoria Falls and find the source of the Nile. Henry
M. Stanley, famed for the movie phrase, "Dr.Livingston
I presume" writes of his adventures in "Through
the Dark Continent" Not leaving Africa is "Origins
Reconsidered" a story of the Leakey family and the
finding of the earliest hominid fossils in east Africa. They
were the foremost researchers in the field. The original
book "Origins" is now out of print and this is the
sequel. "Gorillas in The Mist" by Dianne Fossey is
a story of the modern versus the wild as they affect the
lowland gorillas.
Space, the final frontier is explored in "Carrying the
Fire" by Michael Collins, astronaut and the pilot of
Apollo 11 moon mission. This story tells of behind the
scenes in the early space program. And a tale of
thought, time and space in a "Brief History of Time" by Stephen
Hawking.
Thor Heyerdahl is an adventurer who believed in trying
things to see how the ancient people did things. I have
included his book "Kon Tiki" in which he floats on
a Balsa wood raft from South America toward Easter Island.
His other books, not on the list Aku-Aku about the giant
head shaped statures on Easter Island, and the Ra
Expeditions in which he tried several voyages on a reed boat
from Africa to America. Some of his ideas are controversial,
by the adventures are worth reading.
"The Travels of Marco Polo" is perhaps the first
great adventure travel book recounts the tale a 13th century
trader and explorer from Italy to the courts of Kublai Khan
in China and his 17 years spent in the
journey and in China. I doubt that many have actually read
this book, although everyone has heard of it. It has been
influential in arts, and literature for 700 years. One
example is in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's
poem "Xanadu."
I have included the "Explorations of Captain James
Cook" in the Pacific, including the discovery of Hawaii
and many of the Polynesian Island by Europeans, before of
course he was eaten by cannibals. Charles Darwin "The
Voyage of the Beagle" is the Journey that led to his
proposal of the theory of evolution. It describes his
adventures in South America and the Galapagos Islands. He
was hired on to the ship and given a position basically so
that the Captain would have a gentlemen to serve as a
companion. It would not do that the Captain would dine or
socialize with the common sailor. He was a the son of a
famous poet
Erasmus Darwin and a born writer.
I have two books dealing with the Maya and Inca
civilizations - "The Lost Cities of the Incas" by
Bingham talks of the discovery of Machu Pichu, a city above
the clouds in the Andes, and Stephens' "incidents of
Travel in the Yucatan" is a tale of bushwhacking
through the Jungle to find the great Mayan step pyramids.
There are a handful of books yet unmentioned. "The
Crocodile Hunter" I am sure Steve Irwin's tragic early
death was felt by everyone. He was a conservationist whose
enthusiasm and genuine love for wildlife has
inspired a new generation of young people.
"Running the Amazon" is a tale of a modern
expedition that floated the Amazon from the Andes to the
Atlantic coast.
"Stranger in the Forest: On Foot Across Borneo"
which recounts a trip across the island on foot by author
Richard Hansen in the early 1980's.
"The Darkest Jungle: The True Story of the Darien
Expedition and America's Ill-Fated Race to Connect the
Seas" by Todd Bale is a story of an ill-fated
expedition across the isthmus of Panama in 1854.
"Wonderful Life" by Stephen Jay Gould is a tale of
the varied and fantastic life forms that lived in the end of
the pre-Cambrian period 600 million years ago as preserved
in the Burgess Shale in western Canada. Virtually all
species went extinct at the Precambrian/Cambrian boundary.
This is written by Stephen Jay Gould, one of the most
important thinkers today in the field of evolutionary
biology. It actually is a tale of exploration and adventure
- it just took place 600+ million years ago. Among his other
books of his I would first recommend "The Pandas
Thumb."
"Wild Trees" is a tale by Richard Preston of the
climbing of some of the tallest of the worlds trees.
Illustrations in the book are by ENTS member Andrew Joslin.
Surely this book is right up our alley.
The final Book on the list s far is "The Double
Helix" by James Watson. This is a tale of the
discovery of one of the greatest scientific discoveries of
all time- he double helix structure of the DNA molecule
by James Watson and Richard Crick. This article is the
single most cited reference in scientific literature I could
not leave it off the list.
Ed Frank, June 18, 2007 |
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