When I worked as an editor at 黑料吃瓜网, the formula for a typical adventure memoir often read like this: get trapped in blizzard, trigger avalanche, capsize in Southern Ocean, watch as climbing partner falls hundreds of feet to certain death. But now the adventure world has become much more open to things that were rarely mentioned back then: mental illness, body image, trauma.

This opening has made room for a new kind of exposure in the wild. These books reveal what鈥檚 really going on for the people writing them, with room for honesty, vulnerability, grief, and questions without easy answers.

These are the books I鈥檓 reading this summer, many of them by longtime 黑料吃瓜网 contributors.

1. In My Time Of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife,听by Sebastian Junger

After years as a combat reporter in some of the most dangerous places on earth, Junger was weathering the pandemic on Cape Cod with his wife and two young daughters when he doubled over in pain. As doctors worked to save his life鈥攈is pancreatic artery had burst鈥擩unger crossed a threshold. 鈥淚 became aware of a dark pit below me and to my left. The pit was the purest black and so infinitely deep that it had no real depth at all. It exerted a pull that was slow but unanswerable, and I knew that if I went into the hole, I was never coming back.鈥�

Junger, an 黑料吃瓜网 contributor and the author of The Perfect Storm (among many other books), thankfully did come back, with this searching meditation on what life鈥攁nd death鈥攎ean to all of us. 鈥淵ou will know yourself best at that moment; you will be at your most real, your most honest, your most uncalculated. If you could travel back in time to make use of such knowledge during your life, you would become exactly the person you鈥檇 always hoped to be鈥攂ut none of us do that. We don鈥檛 get that knowledge until it鈥檚 too late.鈥�

2. Becoming Little Shell: Returning Home to the Landless Indians of Montana,听by Chris La Tray

Montana poet laureate Chris La Tray鈥檚 father wanted no part of his Chippewa heritage. So much so that when young Chris went to his grandfather鈥檚 funeral, he was floored to see that most of his relatives were Indigenous. 鈥淗ere was a collection of people I鈥檇 never known but was clearly connected to,鈥� he writes. 鈥淲ho were they? Why didn鈥檛 I know them? Why was I never allowed to know them?鈥�

La Tray鈥檚 chronicle of his journey to track down that heritage is as much a history of a forgotten tribe struggling to get federal recognition as it is a personal homecoming. When he is finally accepted as an enrolled member of the Little Shell Tribe of the Chippewa Indians, 鈥淭he moment is overpowering,鈥� he writes. 鈥淚 take a breath. I鈥檓 part of this, part of them. I wipe the sweat from my brow and take a quick look around me for snakes. Then I follow the trail down the slope, across time, through genocide and diaspora, and fear and death and now rebirth, to food, to companionship, and increasingly, to community.鈥�

3. A Light Through the Cracks: A Climber鈥檚 Story,听by Beth Rodden

Beth Rodden sheds her skin as climbing鈥檚 girl next door to write with honesty and precision about the years-long buried trauma that followed her infamous 2000 kidnapping鈥攊n which Rodden, Tommy Caldwell, and their climbing partners were shot at by Islamic militants while big wall climbing in Kyrgyzstan. But she also reveals harder things: the disordered eating rituals she used to believe helped her float up rock and the desire that awakened when she left Caldwell for her now-husband Randy.

Ultimately, she shares a newfound strength as a happier mother and wife, one who uses her squishy mama belly as just another climbing tool, her flesh 鈥渨rapping around the rock like cling wrap on a chocolate chip cookie.鈥� As Rodden realizes, 鈥淚 had treated myself like a robot for so long, thinking my discipline made me better than regular people. I finally understood that pursuing 鈥榞reatness鈥� didn鈥檛 fill me the way a 鈥榥ormal life鈥� did. If I wanted to have a big life, I needed to live a smaller one.鈥�

4. The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within,听by Cory Richards

Rarely, if ever, has a climber produced a more searing survival story. Among the things that photographer Cory Richards has survived: summiting Everest without oxygen; windstorms at 25,000 feet; and the 2010 avalanche on the Pakistani peak Gasherbrum II that launched his self-portrait onto the 125th anniversary cover of National Geographic. But what he has endured is much harder: his brother鈥檚 fists; unwilling stays in rehab facilities and institutions; recurring panic attacks; and hollow mornings after paid-for sex.

Richards holds almost nothing back, owning the psychiatric diagnoses that have saddled him since he was a boy. 鈥淚 chose to live madly to outrun madness itself,鈥� he writes. 鈥淚鈥檝e thought that by rebellion, doing more, being better, and being different, I might be able to out-climb, out-explore, or out-create the disquiet of my mind. But what if the noise and madness were the gift?鈥�

5. Sharks Don鈥檛 Sink: 黑料吃瓜网s of a Rogue Shark Scientist,听by Jasmin Graham

When she was six, Jasmin Graham鈥檚 father gave her a yellow Tweety Bird fishing rod and took her fishing off the pier in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. So began a love of the ocean that led her to a master’s in marine biology and a career as a shark scientist鈥攁 dream come true even if being a young Black woman scientist also came with sexism and racial microagressions.

Burned out and scrolling Instagram late one night, she was startled alert. 鈥淢y life was changed forever by a single photograph,鈥� she writes. 鈥淚t was of a Black female researcher floating underwater with an adorable nurse shark. I felt like I had discovered a unicorn.鈥� As a result, she and three other Black shark experts founded the nonprofit to generate more opportunities in the field.

鈥淚 see myself and my people in sharks,鈥� Graham writes. 鈥淎ll too often Black people are perceived and treated much like sharks: feared, misunderstood, and brutalized, often without recourse; assumed to be threatening when so often we鈥檙e the ones under threat; portrayed unfairly in the media, so that others are predisposed to have a negative interaction with us.鈥�

6. Fi: A Memoir,听by Alexandra Fuller

In her darkest hour, Alexandra Fuller retreats to a sheep wagon in a high alpine meadow where she can be alone in the agony of her grief. Her son Fuller, or Fi, has just died from a seizure at the age of 21鈥斺�渋n the fatness of summer, in the fullness of youth, on the brink of manhood鈥濃�攁nd the wild is the only place she can exist as she breaks apart.

The author of four previous memoirs, including the award-winning Don鈥檛 Let鈥檚 Go to the Dogs Tonight, Fuller raised her children in Wyoming with echoes of her own wild childhood in Zimbabwe, picking them up after school on horseback, 鈥渨hooping and hollering, cantering home through aspen groves, horses steaming, dogs panting.鈥� As she tells Fi鈥檚 surviving sisters, 鈥淗e鈥檚 our ancestor now. Our young ancestor: feel him in the wind and the sun and the trees, feel him there.鈥�

7. Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World: Zen and the Art of Running Free,听by Katie Arnold

A former editor at 黑料吃瓜网 and a frequent contributor, competitive ultrarunner Arnold was celebrating her tenth anniversary on Idaho鈥檚 Middle Fork of the Salmon River when the raft flipped, ejecting her into the shallow water and shattering her tibial plateau. Her husband was at the oars, and back home she finds herself immobilized, seething with anger at him she can’t burn off. The brief flashings in the title come from Zen Mind, Beginner鈥檚 Mind, the classic collection of talks by the late Japanese Zen master Shunryu Suzuki, who describes the everyday awakenings we all experience as 鈥渇lashings in the vast phenomenal world.鈥�

As Arnold writes, 鈥渢hey are happening all around us, all the time鈥攚hile eating an ice cream cone or riding our bike or sitting broken beside a river鈥攂ut we鈥檙e usually too distracted to notice.鈥� With Suzuki Roshi as her guide, Arnold begins again, putting one foot in front of the other, back to her husband鈥攚hose equanimity, she realizes, makes him a natural Zen master鈥攁nd all the way to victory at the Leadville 100 ultramarathon.

8. Never Leave the Dogs Behind: A Memoir,听by Brianna Madia

We love it when influencers expose their vulnerabilities, but the mercurial social media world can quickly turn against them. Brianna Madia ( and author of the bestseller Nowhere for Very Long) watches her #vanlife bubble pop when she and her ex-husband鈥檚 dog Dagwood gets run over. A GoFundMe campaign saves Dagwood鈥檚 life, but when Madia admits that it was their own van that hit the dog, she鈥檚 the one who takes the blame for not disclosing it sooner. Never mind that her ex was the one driving.

The resulting online bullying is epic and profane, with multiple subreddit threads devoted entirely to proving her a fraud. Holed up in a trailer in the desert outside Moab with her four dogs, Madia hits red-rock bottom. Her recovery, in its tenuous progress, feels raw and believable in the book. And when she enlists a digital forensic investigator and reveals the real names of internet trolls stalking her鈥攚ell, now who are the ones exposed?

9. Wild Life: Finding My Purpose in an Untamed World,听by Rae Wynn-Grant

Rae Wynn-Grant knew what she wanted at a young age: obsessed with wildlife shows hosted by Marlin Perkins and Steve Irwin, she casually told her parents one night at dinner that she was going to host a nature show on TV. Never mind that she lacked the three attributes she figured were essential: being white, male, and having a British or Australian accent.

Today Wynn-Grant is a wildlife ecologist, National Geographic Explorer鈥攁nd, like her hero Perkins鈥攃o-host of Mutual of Omaha鈥檚 Wild Kingdom reboot, Protecting the Wild. 听鈥淥ne thing that I didn鈥檛 anticipate was that the knowledge I gained in the field, studying predators and their prey, would apply to my own life,鈥� she writes. 鈥淎s a young Black mother and professional, I鈥檝e built a career for myself in a space dominated by older white men and charted my own path in a society riddled with ill-fitting expectations.鈥�

10. This Ordinary Stardust: A Scientist鈥檚 Path from Grief to Wonder,听by Alan Townsend

鈥淲hile our flashes may be brief,鈥� writes Alan Townsend in this remarkable memoir, 鈥渟ome of them are impossibly bright, and everything that matters is contained in the ways your own light sparks the ones that lie in everybody else.鈥� Townsend, an ecosystem ecologist and dean of the University of Montana鈥檚 College of Forestry and Conservation, finds his own ecosystem rocked when both his wife and four-year-old daughter are diagnosed with brain tumors.

His wife, a dedicated scientist herself, shows him how to walk through uncertainty with grace and light, while his young daughter possesses a heart as big as the giant stuffed lion that is her companion in the hospital. It is science, in the end, that offers Townsend some measure of comfort. Each of us is a collection of trillions of atoms, he reminds us, coming together and coming apart. 鈥淣o matter what happens, we鈥檙e still here,鈥� he writes. 鈥淎nd we always will be.鈥�

11. We Loved It All: A Memory of Life,听by Lydia Millet

Can you feel the loss of something you never knew in the first place? This is the question novelist and conservationist Lydia Millet poses in her first nonfiction book, an examination of extinction, humanity, and our soul. We surround our children with animals, she notes, stuffed and plastic tigers and bears and dinosaurs, and teach them how to live through storybooks starring animals. But then something happens.

鈥淭he other animals don鈥檛 vanish from our lives as we grow up: they stick around, working in sales,鈥� Millet writes. From the Geiko gecko to Tony the Tiger, “much is lost when the animals are turned into brand ambassadors: their reduction takes a toll on our imaginations.鈥� Millet writes about 鈥渆ndlings,鈥� an individual who is the last of its kind, and about species loneliness, that piercing longing we feel as we hold ourselves farther apart from our animal neighbors.

This is a memoir to be sure鈥攆rom Millet鈥檚 first loves to her own shortcomings as a parent鈥攂ut more than that, it is an uncomfortable mirror held up to all of us, a species disconnected, obsessed with our own reflection. Perhaps our duty as parents is, as much to care for our own children鈥檚 well being, to teach them to care for and about the other species who will鈥攚ith any luck鈥攕erve as their companions.

MORE GREAT BOOKS TO ADD TO YOUR READING LIST:

The 2024 Reading List for Athletes

黑料吃瓜网’s Ultimate Bookshelf

The post These New 黑料吃瓜网 Memoirs Lay It All on the Line appeared first on 黑料吃瓜网 Online.

This story update is part of the听黑料吃瓜网听颁濒补蝉蝉颈肠蝉, a series highlighting the best writing we鈥檝e ever published, along with author interviews and other exclusive bonus materials. Read 鈥淲e Dressed a Modern Man Like an Outdoor Dude from the 1970s and Set Him Loose in the Wild,鈥� by Eric Hansen here.

But we did anyway. For the magazine鈥檚 30th anniversary, celebrated in 2007, 黑料吃瓜网 sent Eric Hansen on simulated time travel to 1976, the year the magazine was founded, by having him dress like a dorky outdoorsman from that era and do his wild and crazy things in the modern world of Boulder, Colorado. Hansen was the perfect choice for this embarrassing assignment. Having started as an intern in 1999, he鈥檇 proven his mettle with his inaugural feature story: poaching a first descent of Kilimanjaro on a pair of Big Feet, the short little skis you see on bunny hills. Sadly, Guinness did not recognize the achievement.

Starting in late 2006, Hansen became 翱耻迟蝉颈诲别鈥�s Out of Bounds columnist for more than three years, memorably writing in the gonzo adventure style of prior greats like Tim Cahill and Randy Wayne White. Among other feats, he ran a marathon above the Arctic Circle while smoking a pack a day and captained 翱耻迟蝉颈诲别鈥�s Partially Icelandic Quidditch World Cup Team, which ended with him getting carried off the field. He could be serious too, and in 2010 wrote 鈥�Amateurs Without Borders,鈥� an account of delivering aid to Haiti by sailboat after that year鈥檚 catastrophic earthquake.

In time, Hansen鈥檚 humanitarian interests led to a career change: he now writes and runs PR for , the international organization founded by the late . Hansen鈥檚 former editor, Elizabeth Hightower Allen, talked to him at his home in New Mexico, where he wore business casual instead of the preferred style of That 鈥�70s Guy: a star-spangled backpack and denim short-shorts.

OUTSIDE: So the concept was to dress you up like an outdoorsy 1970s love machine, send you out into the world, and watch people鈥檚 jaws drop, right?
HANSEN: Yes. The editors wanted to see if seventies style still had the power to frighten. And I think they looked around and were like, Do we have a goofball stuntman in the vicinity? Yes, we do. One thing I loved about this story is that there鈥檚 virtually no news value. So long as you really got into it, you couldn鈥檛 screw it up.

You had to round up some vintage gear, including a T-shirt that said: LOVE MEANS NOTHING TO A TENNIS PLAYER.

Unlike most stories I wrote, I actually did a lot of prep: going to thrift shops, calling gear companies, and rummaging through yard sales. It was a dissociative experience. On the one hand you鈥檙e like, This is so fun. On the other hand, it鈥檚 deeply humiliating. It鈥檚 one thing to paw through the racks, and another to go to a real club in Denver dressed like you just came out of the Hot Tub Time Machine.

How does one prepare to become an adult who does, well, things like this?
I was pretty adventurous, even as a teenager. Growing up in Seattle, there鈥檚 so much to do. When we were 15 years old, four buddies and I took the ferry to Vancouver Island and went sea-kayaking for six days. We had no business doing this. I can鈥檛 even believe my parents allowed it.

At 黑料吃瓜网, a process of elimination came into play. I looked around, saw so many great literary writers, and quickly realized: I can鈥檛 write like that, so what鈥檚 left? Well, go do something the bookworms wouldn鈥檛, and try to be a little bolder or less prepared or more naive.

Your assignments often required serious athleticism and involved similarly serious risk. In the 鈥�70s Guy piece, you鈥檙e doing endoes in kayaks, and you complete a race on a very heavy bike. In other articles you wrote, you skied clear-cuts in southeastern Alaska鈥檚 Tongass National Forest and hitchhiked to a remote bar in Colombia. Did you ever worry about the danger?
At the time, I didn鈥檛 think there was anything weird about it. I don鈥檛 know what I was thinking. I mean, these days I wear a helmet to bike to the grocery store.

Tim Cahill pretty much invented the kind of 黑料吃瓜网 story that combines far-flung adventure with bad decision-making. What did you learn about writing from predecessors like him?
Tim gave me some great advice once. I had a column due, and I had nothing on the page. I just couldn鈥檛 get started. This happened to me every couple of years鈥攐nce, I had Chris Solomon, my roommate at the time and a fellow 黑料吃瓜网 writer, literally duct-tape me to a chair.

Anyway, I was freaking out, so I drank two beers, thinking that would loosen me up to write. Instead it loosened me up to find Cahill鈥檚 phone number on the Web. I left him a message that went something like: 鈥淭im, my name鈥檚 Eric. You probably don鈥檛 know me, but I write for 黑料吃瓜网 and I鈥檓 a huge fan. I have a story due tomorrow and I have nothing. Can you help?鈥�

I woke up at probably 6:30 to a phone call. It was Tim, and he did help. He said to just start writing the part you like. Write that, and then write the next part you like. Sure enough, a week later I had a story.

One of my favorites is 鈥�Out of My Way, Pumpkin,鈥� about an entirely made-up condition called Skills Deficit Syndrome (SDS) that affects mountain-town relationships. Your girlfriend dusts you at every sport and then dumps you because you can鈥檛 keep up.
Well, she dumped me because of other things too, I鈥檓 sure!

听But beneath all the high jinks, you often explored substantive issues. You worked for a week as a trekking porter in Nepal and outlined the indignities Western trekkers impose on porters. And you sailed to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.

I certainly didn鈥檛 go into those stories with an agenda, but I always liked serious takes on comical subjects, and vice versa. One of the things 黑料吃瓜网 taught me is to meet the reader where they are, and then take them someplace new. I was very aware that it鈥檚 an absolute honor to have people read what you鈥檙e writing. And so you really are obliged to entertain while you maintain fidelity to what鈥檚 actually happening.

As for Haiti, I鈥檇 seen poverty like that before, but it blew my mind that it was so close鈥攖he fact that you could get in a little boat and sail to that place. The juxtaposition of Haiti鈥檚 deep poverty with its proximity to the U.S. really struck me. That and how disorganized the international aid apparatus was. It was like a crash course in global health. And it got me interested in it as a career.

What do you think 鈥�70s Guy knew that 2020s Guy does not?
First, that you just have to get out there. Most of the gear in your bedroom is good enough for just about any adventure. The important thing is to find the time and go do it. Second, approach it all with love and curiosity.

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There’s almost nothing better than cracking open a book right where the action takes place鈥攔eading Cheryl Strayed’s on the Pacific Crest Trail or Sebastian Junger’s beside the Atlantic seas that claimed the fishing boat Andrea Gail.

Whether you’re rolling on a road trip or hunkered down under your tent鈥檚 rain fly, you need a worthy paperback companion. In compiling this list, we weren’t looking for another batch of Classics with a capital C, though our selections do include a few. Instead, we canvassed our editors, contributors, and readers with a simpler question: What book would you stuff in your backpack if you were headed to Maine? Or California? Or Missouri or South Carolina or even Washington, D.C.? And because we couldn鈥檛 help ourselves, we also slipped in bonus picks for a few states.

The resulting collection is wide, immersive, and above all readable. We hope it takes you places, whether out in the wild or burrowed happily in your favorite chair.

Alabama: The Last Slave Ship, by Ben Raines (2022)

In 1860, 50 years after the Atlantic slave trade was abolished, the schooner Clotilda stole into Alabama鈥檚 Mobile Bay carrying 110 kidnapped West Africans from Benin. Those enslaved people would go on, after Emancipation, to found a community known as Africatown, and their stories would be told in various chronicles, including Zora Neale Hurston鈥檚 . But Clotilda itself disappeared. Then, in April 2018, using old maps and journals, charter captain Ben Raines found the wreck under the murk of the Mobile River delta. His story weaves together his own obsession with finding the ship and the stories of the people it carried. 鈥�Clotilda was a ghost that haunted three communities鈥攖he descendants of those transported into slavery in her hold, the descendants of their fellow Africans who sold them, and the descendants of their American enslavers,鈥� Raines writes. 鈥淭he only way for that ghost to begin to be expelled was for the ship to be revealed.鈥� 鈥擡lizabeth Hightower Allen

Alaska: The Sun Is a Compass: My 4,000-Mile Journey into the Alaskan Wilds, by Caroline Van Hemert (2019)

Over the last century, icons like John Muir, John McPhee, and Jon Krakauer have all written about Alaska鈥檚 beauty, its severity, and its seductive isolation. But the book that sticks with me most is more recent: Caroline Van Hemert鈥檚 2019 memoir, The Sun Is a Compass, about a months-long, 4,000-mile adventure taken by Van Hemert and her husband. They start in coastal Washington, row the Inside Passage to the Alaska panhandle, then strap on skis and traverse the Coast Range. They canoe, pack-raft, and hike across the Yukon and through the Brooks Range before emerging on Alaska鈥檚 Arctic coast. It is an impressive adventure, but what I love most about the book is its quiet message. Van Hemert is a scientist who lost touch with how her work used to bring her into sync with nature. Her journey has a purpose that any of us can relate to: reconnecting to the ways the wild world ebbs and flows around us. 鈥擡va Holland

Bonus Read: , by Tom Kizzia (2013), an account of the many abuses by modern-day homesteader Papa Pilgrim in what its publisher bills as 鈥�Into the Wild meets Helter Skelter.鈥�

Arizona: The Emerald Mile, by Kevin Fedarko (2013)

The stack of literature about the Grand Canyon is as deep and varied as the rock layers themselves, but we鈥檙e picking the work with the most cubic thrills per second: The Emerald Mile. It鈥檚 the account of the famed 1983 鈥渟peed run鈥� through the Grand Canyon, in which three river guides slipped a wooden dory into the raging floodwaters of the Colorado River by moonlight during a record-breaking high-water year. It was a wild ride鈥�227 miles in just 36 hours鈥攂ut just as wild was the effort by Bureau of Reclamation hydrologists to keep Lake Powell from breaching the Glen Canyon Dam amid the mayhem of the largest helicopter rescue the canyon had ever seen. Come for the adrenaline, stay for the history of the canyon, both natural and man-made. 鈥擡.H.A.

Bonus Read: (2005), the harrowing saga of 26 men attempting to cross the most desolate stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border, by Luis Alberto Urrea.

Arkansas: The Grail Bird, by Tim Gallagher (2005)

The cypress swamps of Arkansas erupted in a blaze of glory in 2004, when the Lord God Bird鈥� a.k.a. the ivory-billed woodpecker鈥攚as sighted in the state鈥檚 Cache River Wildlife Refuge after being presumed extinct for decades. But was that feathered ghost really the ivory-billed? Gallagher, the editor of Living Bird magazine and one of the birders who鈥檇 seen the bird, set out to find proof that the woodpecker still existed. If so, he wrote, 鈥渋t would be the most hopeful event imaginable: we would have one final chance to get it right, to save this bird and the bottomland swamp forests it needs to survive.鈥� Sure enough, in 2022, 17 years after The Grail Bird was published, field researchers claimed multiple new sightings of the Lord God Bird, this time in Louisiana. Bird species may be declining around the world, but in this book, hope is indeed the thing with feathers. 鈥擡.H.A.

California: The Last Season, by Eric Blehm (2006)

We know you鈥檙e packing Wild, by Cheryl Strayed. But also consider The Last Season, which explores the Sierra Nevada through the life and writings of Randy Morgenson, a Yosemite-born park ranger who spent 27 and a half summers in the backcountry of Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks. In July 1996, the 64-year-old loaded up his pack for a routine patrol through terrain he knew better than anyone. Then he disappeared, spurring one of the largest search-and-rescue operations in national park history. Blehm鈥檚 engrossing prose brings to life Morgenson’s dedication to the beauty and isolation of California鈥檚 landscapes鈥攁nd the mystery of how they ultimately swallowed him whole. 鈥擬aren Larsen

Bonus Read: (2023), Los Angeles Times reporter Rosanna Xia鈥檚 thoughtful look at how communities are coping with rising sea levels.

Colorado: Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country, by Pam Houston (2019)

What would you do if you sold your first book and had a whopping $21,000 in your pocket? If you were Pam Houston, you鈥檇 take the money from your surprise 1992 bestseller Cowboys Are My Weakness and drive around the West looking for a home. And you鈥檇 find it, in a 120-acre ranch surrounded by the 12,000-foot peaks of the San Juans, outside the town of Creede. Populated with a rotating cast of beloved horses, donkeys, Icelandic sheep, and Irish wolfhounds, the ranch is her refuge through frozen winters, glorious summers, and a wildfire that almost wipes the whole place out. As for the hope part? It鈥檚 how Houston sees our obligation to the land itself. 鈥淎s we hurtle toward the cliff, foot heavy on the throttle, to write a poem about the loveliness of a newly leafed aspen grove or a hot August wind sweeping across prairie grass,鈥� she writes, feels like the height of naivete. 鈥淏ut then again, maybe not. Maybe this is the best time there has ever been to write unironic odes to nature.鈥� 鈥擡.H.A.

Bonus Read: (2021), Heather Hansman鈥檚 love song to the increasingly difficult lifestyle of the modern ski bum.

Connecticut: A Place of My Own, by Michael Pollan (1997)

Before Michael Pollan became our chief explainer of and , before 鈥渟he sheds鈥� started popping up across America, and before we all started working from home, the decidedly non-handy Pollan set out to construct a tiny writing cabin in his Connecticut backyard. 鈥淚 wanted not only a room of my own,鈥� he writes, 鈥渂ut a room of my own making. I wanted to build this place myself.鈥� Two and a half years of weekends later, under the gruff tutelage of a local carpenter, he had a small shingled hut with a tiny porch and a picture window at the edge of the woods, 鈥渁 place as much one鈥檚 own as a second skin.鈥� He also had the material for this beautiful examination of home and office, work and solitude, privacy and creativity鈥攁 book, critic Janet Malcolm wrote at the time, 鈥渨ith the brilliant plainness of a piece of Shaker furniture.鈥� 鈥擡.H.A.

Delaware: West of Rehoboth, by Alexs D. Pate (2001)

Sometimes adventure is not something that you undertake willingly but is thrust upon you by a change in circumstance or geography. Such is the case in Alexs D. Pate鈥檚 heartfelt coming-of-age novel, West of Rehoboth. The protagonist is a chubby, bookish boy named Edward, whose parents send him to spend the summer of 1962 with his Aunt Edna in West Rehoboth, the Black, working-class side of the well-known Delaware beach resort. While his mom waits tables, Edward explores the woods and creeks and fishes for crabs in the canal that divided the Black side of Rehoboth from the white side, and visits the small scrap of segregated beach allotted to Black folks. Everything about Delaware is terra incognita to him. The plot is explosive, but just as interesting is Pate鈥檚 portrayal of an unseen, under-represented side of a place that seems so peaceful and familiar. 鈥擝ill Gifford

Florida: The Orchid Thief, by Susan Orlean (1998)

After reading The Orchid Thief, you might find yourself with a new flower obsession, googling images of sexy little blooms and itching to get knee-deep in some gnarly swamp water. Susan Orlean experienced such a spiral while reporting this classic nonfiction book. She follows Florida man (in every sense) John Laroche鈥檚 extreme, sometimes illegal pursuits of rare orchids and explores other fanatics throughout history; bizarre orchid biology; and Florida鈥檚 particular natural and Indigenous history. Orlean isn鈥檛 a Floridian herself, so she offers a helpfully perplexed perspective on the state鈥檚 enticing weirdness. 鈥淭he wild part of Florida is really wild. The tame part is really tame. Both, though, are always in flux,鈥� she writes. Orlean comes to appreciate what any Floridian knows about one of the country鈥檚 most misunderstood states. Much like the strange beauty of an extraterrestrial-looking orchid, the qualities that make Florida unique are the same things that make us unable to look away. 鈥擡rin Berger

Georgia: Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, by Janisse Ray (1999)

Part memoir, part natural history, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood earned Ray the sobriquet The Rachel Carson of the South. The book chronicles her childhood growing up in a junkyard alongside Highway 1鈥斺�漬ot a bad place to grow up,鈥� she writes, 鈥渨eird enough to stoke any child鈥檚 curiosity, a playground of endless possibility.鈥� Much of that possibility lay behind the piles of cars and radiators in 鈥渁 singing forest of tall and widely spaced pines,鈥� the longleaf pine ecosystem that once covered the entire South. When Ray wrote this book, only 1 percent of those old-growth longleaf forests remained. It took her a while to embrace her origins, but now, she writes, 鈥漌hat I come from has made me who I am.鈥� 鈥擡.H.A.

Bonus Read: (2009), Warren St. John鈥檚 bestselling story of how a refugee kids鈥� soccer team united tiny Clarkston, Georgia.

Hawaii: Aloha Rodeo, by David Wolman and Julian Smith (2019)

In 1908, three paniolos from the Big Island pulled off a huge upset at Wyoming鈥檚 Frontier Days rodeo, winning the steer-roping competition to the dismay of the mainland cowboys. While the event is central to this book鈥檚 narrative, the backstory is what鈥檚 most captivating; Hawaiians have been herding longhorn up and down the rough slopes of the state鈥檚 volcanoes since the early 1800s, decades after cattle were first dropped into the waters off the western town of Captain Cook and forced to splash their way ashore amid the sharks. Spanish vaqueros who came from California taught locals their skills, introducing the islanders to working with horses to help them manage what quickly became a massive bovine population that would change not only the landscape but island culture and politics. That heritage lives on during the annual Panaewa Stampede Rodeo in Hilo. 鈥擳asha Zemke

Bonus Read: (2010), Susan Casey鈥檚 immersive exploration of the 鈥渕onsters of the deep鈥� and the surfers who chase them.

Idaho: Indian Creek Chronicles: A Winter in the Wilderness by Pete Fromm (1993)

In 1978, Pete Fromm was a 20-year-old student at the University of Montana in Missoula. That year, he stumbled into a job overwintering in a wall tent in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness guarding millions of tiny salmon eggs that Idaho Fish and Game had placed in the local hatchery. Fromm decided he wanted to be a mountain man, but he couldn’t have been more uneducated in the ways of wilderness survival. He goes into the backcountry a naive quasi鈥揻rat boy and comes out closer to Grizzly Adams. Which is to say, almost entirely on his own, he learns to hunt (everything from grouse to moose), cook (from the barest cache of dry goods), get from point A to point B (mostly on snowshoes), and appreciate the predators, prey, and chorus of hunters that break up his sometimes unbearable isolation. Read this book if you liked Into the Wild but wanted a triumphant ending. 鈥擳racy Ross

Illinois: Life of Black Hawk, or Ma-Ka-Tai-Me-She-Kia-Kiak, by Black Hawk (1833)

This 19th-century Sauk war captain is best known for the 1832 conflict that bears his name, in which Sauk soldiers fought with the British to repel American settlers from parts of present-day Illinois and Wisconsin. But he also dictated his autobiography to an interpreter, an adventurous story for an adventurous life. Black Hawk fought his first battle while barely a teenager, clubbing an Osage enemy to death and then presenting the scalp to his father. 鈥淗e said nothing,鈥� Black Hawk recalls, 鈥渂ut looked pleased.鈥� This book bristles with violence鈥攖he death of his father at the hands of Cherokee fighters, the death of his adopted son by a few murderous whites. But it also contains wonderful descriptions of the cornfields tended by Sauk women, the Rock River with its abundance of fish, the land that houses 鈥渢he graves of our friends.鈥� After losing the Black Hawk War, the Sauk had to leave all of it, something Black Hawk laments again and again: 鈥淲hy did the Great Spirit ever send the whites to this island, to drive us from our homes?鈥� 鈥擟raig Fehrman

Indiana: Rural Free: A Farmwife鈥檚 Almanac of Country Living, by Rachel Peden (1961)

Rachel Peden was a farmer and local newspaper columnist before Knopf published her first book, Rural Free, in 1961. The book became a media sensation (as did its author), and reading it now you can see why. Rural Free鈥檚 chapters follow the months, starting with September, and in them Peden describes her family, their farm, and the natural world that envelops them. 鈥淣ights,鈥� she writes, 鈥渁re marked by a steady humming spread on the air like a thick blanket.鈥� Peden makes sure her readers can hear the different parts of that humming, the crickets and the katydids and 鈥渢he rare cello of a big bullfrog at the pond back of the barn.鈥� Her writing remains funny, observant, unhurried, and most of all local, committed to the smells and sights and sounds of her home state. 鈥擟.F.

Iowa: Wildland Sentinel: Field Notes from an Iowa Conservation Officer, by Erika Billerbeck (2020)

If you鈥檙e curious about what wilderness looks like in a state that鈥檚 97 percent privately owned, try this fresh memoir by a rookie law enforcement ranger. 鈥淚 am an Iowa native,鈥� Billerbeck writes. 鈥淏ut as a newly badged officer, standing in the bed of my pickup for a better view, 鈥� I found myself wondering if I would be able to find the natural resources I was sworn to safeguard.鈥� Her work includes everything from arresting drunken boaters to chasing down wayward skunks. 鈥淚 once read a memoir by a game warden who seemingly emerged from the womb with a badge on his chest and a gun on his hip,鈥� she writes. 鈥淢y story is much less heroic.鈥� Still, there may be no better way to get to know Iowa鈥檚 wild spaces than riding shotgun in Billerbeck鈥檚 truck. 鈥擡.H.A.

Bonus Read: (1991), novelist Jane Smiley鈥檚 prizewinning reimagination of King Lear on a 20th-century farm.

Kansas: Grassland: The History, Biology, Politics, and Promise of the American Prairie, by Richard Manning (1997)

Many travelers speed through the grassy expanses of the Great Plains, but in doing so they miss a landscape both beautiful and powerful. In Grassland, Richard Manning explores the history of these vast landscapes, their rich biology, the myriad misguided efforts to tame them, and the growing understanding of our need to adapt our lives to the grasslands rather than try to get them to adapt to our agendas. Grassland will compel and haunt you with its appreciation of the unique character and experience of the plains. 鈥淭he solitude of the prairie is like no other,鈥� he writes, 鈥渢he feeling of being hidden and alone in a grassland as open as the sea.鈥� 鈥擩onathan Beverly

Kentucky: Appalachian Elegy, by bell hooks (2012)

In a state that rightfully claims Wendell Berry as its bard and eco-conscience, another writer has harvested poetry just as connected to the land. Writer and feminist bell hooks started her journey in the isolated foothills of Appalachia; while her path took her to Stanford University and New York, she returned to teach at Berea College in eastern Kentucky, where she lived until her death in 2021. The poems here give voice to generations of Black people who took refuge in rural mountain pockets and made them their own. 鈥淭o be from the backwoods was to be part of the wild,鈥� hooks writes in the book鈥檚 introduction. 鈥淲here we lived, black folks were as much a part of the wild, living in a natural way on the earth, as white folks. All backwoods folks were poor by material standards; they knew how to make do. They were not wanting to tame the wild, in themselves or in nature.鈥� 鈥擡.H.A.

Louisiana: The Tin Roof Blowdown, by James Lee Burke (2007)

Hurricane Katrina did more than expose the social fractures of low-lying New Orleans and the ineptitude of the federal disaster response. The 2005 storm and its aftermath also inspired some of the best nonfiction of the 21st century. Our pick is fictional, but no less true: James Lee Burke brings back beloved Iberia Parish detective Dave Robicheaux in The Tin Roof Blowdown, which The New York Times called 鈥渢he definitive crime novel about Hurricane Katrina.鈥� Robicheaux finds himself neck-deep in corrupt muck populated by looters, trapped church parishioners, and a missing priest. Read those nonfiction books for their masterful journalistic accounts; read this for the human tide that flows underneath. 鈥擡.H.A.

Bonus Read: (2006), the must-read account of the disaster by historian鈥攁nd Katrina evacuee鈥擠ouglas Brinkley.

Maine: The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit, by Michael Finkel (2017)

Ever since Henry David Thoreau struck off for the Maine Woods in 1864, we have turned to this wilderness to both find and lose ourselves. At 20, Christopher Knight made an arguably childish decision to get lost in these storied woods in the spring of 1986. Then he decided to stay that way for 27 years, not by surviving off the land but by raiding nearby vacation cabins. He was a modern-day robber-hermit who never took more than he needed and almost always locked up after he was done 鈥渟hopping.鈥� With spare, precise prose, Finkel lays a case that Knight, who had only two conversations during his time in the woods, is a uniquely Maine phenomenon, combining a sincere need to be left alone with the local live-and-let-live sensibility that allowed for such an existence. 鈥淗e does not care if people fail to understand what he did in the woods, 鈥� writes Finkel. 鈥淗e didn鈥檛 do it for us to understand. He wasn鈥檛 trying to prove a point. There was no point.鈥� Knight was, in his own words, 鈥渃ompletely free.鈥� 鈥擶. Hodding Carter

Maryland: Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen, Crabs, and the Chesapeake Bay, by William W. Warner (1976)

The Latin name for the Chesapeake blue crab, Callinectes sapidus, translates literally as 鈥渟avory beautiful swimmer.鈥� And this ode to Maryland鈥檚 Eastern Shore and its watermen is worthy of that name. Warner spent a year out with crabbers, and no piece of eelgrass or ritual of crab courtship escapes his notice. That鈥檚 because he treats the lives of these crustaceans, and the crabbers who follow them, with the utmost fascination and delight. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Beautiful Swimmers is indispensable reading about the Chesapeake Bay. 鈥擡.H.A.

Massachusetts: Upstream, by Mary Oliver (2016)

In her final book, Upstream, Mary Oliver muses with her classic quiet elegance on the transcendentalists before her and winds their stories with her own moments of awe in nature. Set in her cabin on Cape Cod, she talks about her small discoveries鈥攁 wounded gull, being unable to find the right words to describe a sunflower, a fox out on a frozen pond. Oliver reminds us to take that extra deep breath, to slow our step and be present in nature, which I would argue is the best adventure of all. 鈥擪yra Kennedy

Bonus Read: (2023), a fictional chronicle of one piece of western Massachusetts land and its inhabitants over the centuries, by Daniel Mason.

Michigan: Rivers of Sand: Fly Fishing Michigan & the Great Lakes Region, by Josh Greenberg (2014)

If you hear the words Michigan and trout, you鈥檒l probably think of Ernest Hemingway鈥檚 . But for my money, the best writing about fishing in Michigan is found in a guidebook: Rivers of Sand, by Josh Greenberg, who owns and runs Gates Au Sable Lodge on the famed Holy Waters of the Au Sable. Sure, it鈥檚 helped me catch more fish. But it鈥檚 also taught me how to be a better angler, which is a different thing. In an early chapter about fishing small creeks in the state, Greenberg stumbles onto a 20-inch monster cruising in a pool. Before even trying to catch the thing, he writes, 鈥淭his trout, on this mysterious little Michigan stream, in the day, in the sunlight, was priceless in the way only nature can be priceless.鈥� That鈥檚 the way I want to think about fishing: as a pursuit rather than an activity, a journey rather than a destination. And Greenberg is exactly the guy I want to guide me. 鈥擩onah Ogles

Minnesota: A Year in the Wilderness: Bearing Witness in the Boundary Waters, by Dave and Amy Freeman (2017)

In 1956, Sigurd F. Olson published , a compilation of lyrical essays celebrating four seasons in northern Minnesota鈥檚 Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and the adjacent Quetico Provincial Park in Ontario. The book was the gold standard of north-woods nature writing for more than half a century. In 2017, married couple Dave and Amy Freeman furthered that tradition, bringing a unique perspective to the Boundary Waters鈥� beautiful solitude through an entire year of sleeping, eating, paddling, portaging, dogsledding, and camping within the confines of the one-million-acre wilderness. More important, they set out to accomplish a specific mission鈥攖o raise awareness of the threats that proposed sulfide-ore copper mines pose to the region. 鈥淭he year taught us to slow down,鈥� Amy writes. 鈥淲e were able to notice all these tiny miracles happening all around us that we would have missed if we were focused on racking up the miles.鈥� 鈥擲tephanie Pearson

Bonus Reads: The Indigenous histories by Ojibwe Red Lake brothers David and Anton Treuer, including Anton鈥檚 (2015) and David鈥檚 (2019).

Mississippi: Salvage the Bones, by Jesmyn Ward (2011)

In Jesmyn Ward鈥檚 seminal novel about a family loving and fighting its way through life in southern Mississippi in the days before Hurricane Katrina, nature weaves its way into, out of, over, and through her characters as a living, breathing being. The inescapable red dirt is at once a parasite invading their very pores and a friend comforting and enveloping. It鈥檚 in every step Esch, the pregnant adolescent听protagonist, takes and in every breath she breathes. Nature is a mother striding alongside Esch and her brothers as they dart into and through danger鈥攕ometimes holding their hands, sometimes swatting them: 鈥渁ll I can hear is the pine trees shushing each other, the oak trees bristling, the magnolia leaves hard and wide so that they sound like paper plates clattering when the wind hits them,鈥� writes Ward. In Salvage the Bones, her lyrical talent dissolves the separation between humans and nature. 鈥擶.H.C.

Missouri: Mississippi Solo, by Eddy L. Harris (1988)

Ever since Mark Twain worked as a steamboat pilot in the 1850s, the Mississippi River has sparked boyhood dreams. Eddy Harris certainly had them; growing up in St. Louis, he鈥檇 always wanted to travel the river from source to sea. In other ways, he wasn鈥檛 the usual river bard. He didn鈥檛 know how to paddle, for one; and he鈥檚 Black. Still, in 1985, at age 30, he launched a canoe in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, bound for New Orleans, a journey, he writes, from 鈥渨here there ain鈥檛 no black folks to where they still don鈥檛 like us much.鈥� Harris dodges barges, wild dogs, and locals with shotguns, but mostly encounters kindness and generosity. Twenty-five years later, he repeated the adventure in a trip he joked about as 鈥渙ld black man meets old man river.鈥� This more recent trip was an 鈥渁nti-fear鈥� journey, he said, to show Black Americans that nature belongs to them as much as anyone. The resulting 2017 documentary, River to the Heart, is a big-hearted bookend to one of the best travelogues ever written about America鈥檚 heartland. 鈥擡.H.A.

Montana: Fools Crow, by James Welch (1986)

There are plenty of great books about Montana, including Norman Maclean鈥檚 beloved A River Runs Through It and Young Men and Fire. But consider the lesser known classic Fools Crow, a 1986 novel by Blackfoot and A鈥檃ninin (Gros Ventre) author James Welch. Set in the 1870s, a young man called White Man鈥檚 Dog comes of age in a time when his culture and people are under siege. His homeland is fecund and beautiful: mountains and plains populated with ample wildlife and threaded by generous rivers. But white settlers are overtaking Blackfoot lands, the U.S. government is launching bloody military campaigns, and smallpox encroaches. In this book, Welch offers a window into a different Montana, before massive national parks, wealthy ski-resort towns, and white ranchers came to define the area. 鈥擜bigail Barronian

Bonus Read: (2017), Nate Blakeslee鈥檚 compelling, affecting biography of legendary Yellowstone alpha female O-Six.

Nebraska: Zoo Nebraska, by Carson Vaughan (2019)

This stranger-than-fiction tale unspools the story of Dick Haskin and his crazy dream of running a primate research center in his tiny hometown of Royal, Nebraska. It鈥檚 got everything: unexpected twists, small-town intrigue, and, of course, violent chimpanzees on the loose. Guilty watchers of Tiger King know how easy it would be to play it all for lurid comedy. But Vaughan sees something deeper. Haskin had been planning to go to Rwanda to study under primatologist Dian Fossey when poachers murdered her. Instead, he acquired Reuben, a young male chimp, and bought a trailer home on the edge of town to keep his research dream alive. With a detective鈥檚 eye for detail and an unerring ear for dialogue, Vaughan reveals Haskin鈥檚 undoing for what it really is: a strange, ineffable, and heartbreaking emblem of what it means to live in鈥攁nd feel circumscribed by鈥攖he narrow bounds of a dying town. 鈥擳ed Genoways

Bonus Read: Ted Genoways鈥檚 own book, , about the modern complexities of working a traditional American family farm (2017).

Nevada: Savage Dreams: A Journey into the Hidden Wars of the American West, by Rebecca Solnit (2000)

Rebecca Solnit鈥檚 second book explores what she has dubbed the 鈥渉idden wars of the American West,鈥� including the violent expulsion of the Ahwahnechee tribe from California’s Yosemite Valley in 1851 and the nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site beginning a hundred years later. Those tests exposed 鈥渄ownwinders鈥� in the Great Basin to the fallout from hundreds of nuclear explosions over a two-year period. Nevada, with its wide-open desertscapes, colorful skies, and remote peaks, cannot be understood without an honest look at how the land and people fell victim to the nation鈥檚 quest for global military supremacy. But Solnit鈥檚 capacious writing brings both the ravages and the beauty of Nevada to life. The book, a combination of criticism, reportage, and historical research, helps the reader place these events in the longer history and myth-making of the American West, and raises questions about how we relate to both wild and developed landscapes. 鈥擜.B.

New Hampshire: A Walk in the Woods, by Bill Bryson (1998)

A Walk in the Woods is to the Appalachian Trail what Wild is to the Pacific Crest Trail鈥攁 book-turned-movie that sent hordes of hikers in its bootprints鈥攐nly a whole lot funnier. While Bryson began his hike in Georgia and ended up walking only about 40 percent of the route, the Granite State is what inspired the whole idea. Freshly settled in Dartmouth after years living in England, Bryson happened upon a path leading into the forest. Oh gee, it鈥檚 the AT! But readers鈥� groans will turn quickly to snorts during a Monty Python-esque set piece at the Dartmouth Co-op with a gear-splaining sales clerk: 鈥淗e would say things to me like: 鈥楴ow this has a 70-denier high-density abrasion-resistant fly with a ripstop weave. On the other hand, and I鈥檒l be frank with you here鈥欌�攁nd he would lean to me and reduce his voice to a low, candid tone as if disclosing that it had once been arrested in a public toilet with a sailor鈥斺�榯he seams are lap felled rather than bias taped and the vestibule is a little cramped.鈥欌�� This scene alone is worth the price of admission, and thankfully it鈥檚 just the beginning. 鈥擡.H.A.

New Jersey: The Meadowlands: Wilderness 黑料吃瓜网s at the Edge of a City, by Robert Sullivan (1998)

John McPhee鈥檚 The Pine Barrens, a magisterial account of that million-acre tract of forest in southern New Jersey, might seem the logical pick here, but I would suggest that Sullivan鈥檚 unexpected foray into 鈥渢he world鈥檚 greatest industrial swamp鈥� more compellingly captures the always fraught human-nature nexus in the Garden State. Living in the Pacific Northwest, with snowcapped mountains at his disposal, Manhattan native Sullivan decides to come home to explore鈥攐n foot, on car, on kayak鈥攁 landscape that haunted his boyhood. Where, as Sullivan notes, the first settlers would have found animal life 鈥渃omparable to the number of cars on the Turnpike on a Friday night before a holiday,鈥� its marshy recesses became a sordid Superfund symbol for environmental degradation (with the disposal of everything from PCBs to, reputedly, any number of mobsters)听and a gritty, forlorn backdrop to Springsteen, The Sopranos, and the rest of the Jersey mythos.听 鈥淭here are real hills in the Meadowlands,鈥� Sullivan writes, in one of my favorite sentences, 鈥渁nd there are garbage hills.鈥� Today, the ever evolving Meadowlands, after decades of cleanup efforts, has become a favored habitat for birds, with nearly 300 species recorded. Not bad for the swamps of Jersey. 鈥擳om Vanderbilt

New Mexico: Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya (1972)

The Land of Enchantment is so rich in literary tradition鈥擨ndigenous, Hispanic, and Anglo鈥攖hat we had a hard time choosing (and we don鈥檛 say that just because many of 黑料吃瓜网鈥檚 editors live in Santa Fe). Anaya weaves many of those threads together in the story of Antonio, a Chicano boy in 1950s Santa Rosa navigating a universe of Spanish Catholicism, Indigenous tradition, and ambient magic. The title character, the curandera, or healer, Ultima, is 鈥渁 repository of Spanish, Mexican, and Native American teachings,鈥� Anaya wrote in a new introduction in 1999. 鈥淲ith her guidance Antonio begins to understand that the river, the open plain, and all of nature is imbued with spirit. Everything is alive; God is everywhere.鈥� By now a beloved coming-of-age classic, Bless Me, Ultima has been banned and even burned for what was seen as antireligious messaging. But its hold on readers has endured. 鈥擡.H.A.

Bonus Read: (2022), Navajo author Ramona Emerson鈥檚 chilling debut about a Din茅 crime scene photographer who can鈥檛 escape the ghosts of the victims whose deaths she documents.

New York: My Side of the Mountain, by Jean Craighead George (1959)

I was already a semi-feral child in the New York suburbs by the time I read this classic 1959 novel about 12-year-old Sam Gribley, who runs away from his family in New York City to live off the land in the Catskills with a falcon, a weasel, and other wild friends for company. It鈥檚 meant to be read by kids about the age of its protagonist and has had an outsize impact on generations of civilization-cramped children, serving as a gateway drug to a lifelong addiction to the natural world. The book is full of lessons in grit, resourcefulness, and self-sufficiency, from trapping animals to making acorn pancakes. But it is the direct language that connects most with its young readers, allowing them to imagine a life lived closer to nature鈥檚 rhythms. 鈥淪pring is terribly exciting when you鈥檙e living right in it,鈥� Sam observes. A Washington Post reporter before turning to books, George often said she was channeling through Sam her own childhood memories, including a desire to escape the confines of society. 鈥擳im Sohn

North Carolina: The Last American Man, by Elizabeth Gilbert (2002)

Eight years before Eat, Pray, Love made her a celebrity, Elizabeth Gilbert wrote this classic about the kind of self-reliant frontiersman we don鈥檛 tend to see anymore. 鈥淏y the time Eustace Conway was 6 years old,鈥� she writes, 鈥渉e could throw a knife accurately enough to nail a chipmunk to a tree. By the time he was 10, he could kill a running squirrel at fifty feet with a bow and arrow. When he turned 12, he went into the forest alone and empty-handed for a week.鈥� The first time Gilbert met him, he turned up in New York in a handmade buckskin suit. Some of Conway鈥檚 comments haven鈥檛 aged well; he told Gilbert he wanted a woman to bear him many children and read out diary excerpts detailing his ardent lovemaking. But dang, this man is tough, a character right out of The History Channel鈥檚 Mountain Men. And indeed, Eustace Conway has a recurring role on the show. 鈥擡.H.A.

Bonus Read: (2016), Robert Moor鈥檚 examination of how we find our way, from ant trails to Cherokee footpaths.

North Dakota: The Night Watchman, by Louise Erdrich (2020)

North Dakota is Erdrich country, and there鈥檚 no better place to start than this Pulitzer Prize鈥搘inning novel, the closest to her own life. A member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, Erdrich based the plot on her maternal grandfather, Patrick Gorneau, the chief of the tribe鈥檚 advisory council and a night watchman at the local jewel-bearing plant, where tiny slivers were shaved off rubies and diamonds for watch and airplane parts. In 1954鈥攖rue story鈥攖he U.S. government announced that the Turtle Mountain Band would cease to exist, part of its midcentury policy of 鈥渢ermination.鈥� But after Gorneau testified before Congress, the tribe won a reprieve. As Erdrich writes in the novel鈥檚 addendum, 鈥淚f you should ever doubt that a series of dry words in a government document can shatter spirits and demolish lives, let this book erase that doubt. Conversely, if you should be of the conviction that we are powerless to change those dry words, let this book give you heart.鈥� 鈥擡.H.A.

Bonus Read: (2020), by Sierra Crane Murdoch鈥攁n unflinching true-crime account of Arikara woman Lissa Yellow Bird鈥檚 redemptive quest to find out who killed an oil worker on tribal land.

Ohio: The Death and Life of the Great Lakes, by Dan Egan (2017)

People don鈥檛 picture water when they picture Ohio. But there鈥檚 a lot of it there to explore, starting with the 94,000 square miles鈥� worth that make up the Great Lakes. As Dan Egan reveals in his masterful The Death and Life of the Great Lakes, these troubled waters strike many as an environmental success story鈥攐r at least as a huge improvement over the lakes鈥� industrialized low point, most famously evoked by Cleveland and its Cuyahoga River fire in 1969. Today, Egan notes, the Cuyahoga 鈥渄raws more fishing lines than punch lines.鈥� But underneath the sparkling blue surface, new ecological threats lurk. Take Toledo, where residents drained local swamps and created rich farmland but also toxic algae blooms that threaten Lake Erie and the area鈥檚 water supply. Egan tells a riveting, dispiriting story of canoes and lake trout and 20-foot waves鈥攂ut, most of all, of humanity and its unintended consequences. 鈥擟.F.

Oklahoma: The Way to Rainy Mountain, by N. Scott Momaday (1969)

Kiowa author Momaday covers several states in his work鈥攈e spent most of his life in Arizona and New Mexico鈥攂ut none so elementally as his birth state of Oklahoma. Part history, part memoir, and part folklore, The Way to Rainy Mountain explores his own identity as he follows the tribe鈥檚 migrations from Montana across the Great Plains and its ultimate forced relocation to a reservation in southwestern Oklahoma. There, at the foot of Rainy Mountain, he visits his grandmother鈥檚 grave. 鈥淭o look upon that landscape in the early morning, with the sun at your back, is to lose the sense of proportion,鈥� he writes. 鈥淵our imagination comes to life, and this, you think, is where Creation was begun.鈥� 鈥擡.H.A.

Oregon: Astoria: Astor and Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire: A Tale of Ambition and Survival on the Early American Frontier, by Peter Stark (2014)

Peter Stark鈥檚 Astoria: Astor and Jefferson鈥檚 Lost Pacific Empire tells the story of John Jacob Astor鈥檚 plan to monopolize the global fur trade in 1810. It all hinged on establishing a trading post at the mouth of the Columbia River鈥攑resent-day Astoria. Astor sent two expeditions: one by sea and the other overland, on a route established two years earlier by Lewis and Clark. Astor was a poor judge of leaders, and both parties were almost comically doomed from the beginning鈥攚hich is precisely what makes this book such a good read. With so much infighting, paranoia, double-crossing, madness, and starvation, there鈥檚 plenty of action to fuel Stark鈥檚 dueling narratives. 鈥淎mericans love heroes and winners,鈥� writes Stark, explaining why the remarkable story has been lost to history. 鈥淚n Astoria, there are few clear-cut winners and no unblemished heroes.鈥� 鈥擟hris Keyes

Pennsylvania: Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America, by Eliza Griswold (2018)

鈥淭his is the story of those Americans,鈥� Eliza Griswold writes, 鈥渨ho鈥檝e wrestled with the price their communities have long paid so the rest of us can plug in our phones.鈥� It鈥檚 the story of fracking, the story of the fouled water and dying farm animals that lie underneath our domestic energy policy. And it鈥檚 the story of two towns of rural conservatives who find themselves sickened by the fracking boom, including a single mother who takes her fight against Range Resources all the way to the Supreme Court. Griswold is a poet and global correspondent who has seen firsthand how 鈥渟ome of the poorest people in the world live on some of the most resource-rich land.鈥� Amity and Prosperity, which won the Pulitzer Prize, is a beautiful cry for environmental justice. 鈥擡.H.A.

Rhode Island: Spartina, by John Casey (1989)

The New York Times called this 鈥減ossibly the best American novel about going fishing since The Old Man and the Sea, maybe even Moby-Dick.鈥� Dick Pierce, a commercial fisherman, is barely supporting his family pulling lobster and quahogs out the salt marshes near Narragansett Bay. That hasn鈥檛 stopped him from sinking thousands into a half-built 50-foot boat in his yard, his ticket to big-time fishing and a money pit that is the abiding passion of his life. Spartina, named after the marsh grass that thrives in the area鈥檚 salty black soil, does finally make it into the water鈥nd straight into a hurricane that sparks a reckoning in Pierce鈥檚 life back on shore. 鈥擡.H.A.

South Carolina: The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man鈥檚 Love Affair with Nature, by J. Drew Lanham (2017)

In October 2022, Drew Lanham was awarded a MacArthur 鈥済enius grant,鈥� proof that the secret is out on one of the South鈥檚 most valuable writers and conservationists. Growing up in rural Edgefield County like generations of Lanhams before him, he surprises wild turkey and foxes on the same land where his ancestors worked as slaves. 鈥淚n me,鈥� he writes, 鈥渢here is the red of miry clay, the brown of spring floods, the gold of ripening tobacco. I am, in the deepest sense, colored.鈥� He wrestles with that history, as well as being that 鈥渞are bird,鈥� a Black birder in a white conservation world. A professor at Clemson University, Lanham writes that his home county still has a mixed and powerful draw. 鈥淒ouble standards are as common as ragweed and persistent as kudzu across the region,鈥� he writes. 鈥淏ut Edgefield was still my refuge, primarily because it was and is a sanctuary for creatures that aren鈥檛 subject to the prejudice of men.鈥� 鈥擡.H.A.

South Dakota: Buffalo for the Broken Heart, by Dan O鈥橞rien (2001)

Some years after buying the Broken Heart Ranch in South Dakota, author, environmentalist, and rancher O鈥橞rien stumbled on a radical notion in the wake of years of poor grazing conditions that decimated his cattle herd: bison. The natural inhabitants of the Great Plains are these woolly giants, not his overbred Angus cattle, which were destroying the land through their intense grazing habits. So he set off to transform his cattle ranch into a working bison preserve, which he subsequently chronicles in this impassioned memoir about the emotional struggles, backbreaking work, and redemptive exhilaration of seeing the effort through. O鈥橞rien is an award-winning novelist, so his prose shines, and he also understands the High Plains better than most. Today, O鈥橞rien has an even larger, 9,000-acre ranch鈥攁long with grazing leases on another 24,000 acres鈥攁nd through bison ranching he has increased biodiversity on the land, helped capture vast amounts of carbon dioxide through the protection of native grasslands, and produced some of the healthiest red meat on the planet. 鈥擱yan Krogh

Tennessee: The Forest Unseen: A Year鈥檚 Watch in Nature, by David George Haskell (2012)

Tennessee鈥檚 Cumberland Plateau is home to uncounted bluffs, gorges, waterfalls, swimming holes鈥攁nd the University of the South, a.k.a. Sewanee, a small bastion of literary all-stars, including biologist David George Haskell. In The Forest Unseen, the naturalist charts the comings and goings in a single square meter of old-growth forest over the course of a year. This is boring only in the way that Zen is boring. Yes, you sit, but it can be transformative. And indeed, Haskell鈥檚 inspiration is the Tibetan mandala, in which, he writes, 鈥渢he whole universe is seen through a circle of sand.鈥� In this particular galaxy, warblers, shrews, and salamanders (鈥渢he sharks of the leaf litter鈥�) move as giant predators while plants deploy their own strategies to survive. 鈥淭he mandala is a mulloskan Serengeti,鈥� Haskell writes. 鈥淗erds of coiled grazers move across the open savannah of lichens and mosses.鈥� He watches as a snail 鈥渉eads toward El Capitan, or a smallish rock, depending on how you see the world鈥�.Gravity blinks and the animal flows impossibly upward.鈥� A tiny little Alex Honnold muscling its way up a sheer rock face. 鈥擡.H.A.

Bonus Read: (2012), Barbara Kingsolver鈥檚 readable bestseller about climate, butterflies, and a small Appalachian farm.

Texas: Goodbye to a River, by John Graves (1959)

The writer John Graves lost the sight in one eye to an enemy grenade during World War II, taught English at universities in the U.S., and lived abroad in Europe and Mexico. Then, in 1957, he returned home to care for his dying father. In November of that year, he took what he thought would be a final canoe trip down the Brazos River, which was slated for several dams that would drown the riversides he鈥檇 explored since childhood. Graves鈥檚 account of that trip turned into Goodbye to a River, which weaves the narrative of the voyage with a natural and cultural history of the stream. The book was nominated for a National Book Award, and it helped stop most of the proposed dam projects. Although limited at times by the macho voice that prevailed in that era of Texas letters, Goodbye to a River is ultimately a book about trying to know yourself better by adventuring alone into the remote reaches of the place you come from. As Graves puts it: 鈥淥ne river, seen right, may well be all rivers that flow to the sea.鈥� 鈥擶ill Bostwick

Bonus Read: (2021), Darcie Little Badger鈥檚 National Book Award鈥搉ominated YA novel about a Lipan Apache girl fighting for the environment with the help of some friends in the spirit world.

Utah: Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place, by Terry Tempest Williams (1991)

The deserts of Utah are unlike anywhere else, beautiful and harsh, full of the feeling that everything you admire could kill you. Terry Tempest Williams鈥檚 book-length essay, Refuge, holds that contrast, too. Williams is a fifth-generation Utahn, and in the mid-eighties, when her mother and other women in her family were dying of breast cancer (because, she suspects, they were exposed to atomic bomb tests the government staged in the southwestern deserts), and her favorite place, the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, was flooding from mismanagement of water in the desert, she dove into the question of how to live in and love a place deeply altered by humans. Refuge, like the landscape in which it鈥檚 based, is both gorgeous and harrowing. Williams makes that edge of disaster feel very close. But she also leans into the beauty of living in a harsh, human-changed landscape, a stance that feels highly relevant in Utah today. 鈥擧eather Hansman

Vermont: Long Distance: Testing the Limits of Body and Spirit in a Year of Living Strenuously, by Bill McKibben (2000)

Most of us know his climate work, but Bill McKibben is also an avid cross-country ski racer. At age 37, the spindly writer embarks upon what he calls 鈥渁 process of jockification.鈥� A self-described wimp in childhood, he devotes a year of rigorous training to transform himself from an avid amateur endurance skier into a competitive cross-country racer. 鈥淧artly it was pure selfishness,鈥� he writes. 鈥淎fter a decade as an environmental writer and activist, I needed a break from failing to save the world. But mostly it was curiosity that drove me. By year’s end I hoped I’d have more sense of what life lived through the body felt like.鈥� Along the way, however, he is faced with the failings of the body when his father is diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor. One of the most personal of McKibben鈥檚 18 books, Long Distance reveals the all-too-human athlete behind the climate warrior. 鈥淚 came seeking sweat,鈥� he writes, 鈥渁nd only found enlightenment.鈥� 鈥擡.H.A.

Bonus Read: (2005), by Laura Waterman, about the author鈥檚 husband鈥檚 choice to leave the homestead and end his life by freezing on Mount Lafayette in 2000.

Virginia: Chesapeake Requiem: A Year with the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island, by Earl Swift (2018)

Think of this and Beautiful Swimmers, our Maryland choice, as a matched pair. Tangier Island, a speck in the Chesapeake Bay, is home to fewer than 500 people, a tight-knit community that has been anchored there since before the Revolutionary War. But the island has lost two thirds of its landmass since 1850, and thanks to climate change, the famed crabbing outpost is in danger of being overwhelmed by the waves. 黑料吃瓜网 contributor Swift chronicles the fishermen and -women over several decades, as the sea literally takes their forebears from their graves. 鈥淚 consider the [head]stones for a long moment,鈥� he writes, 鈥渨ondering whether the people bearing those names ever imagined that the bay would one day claim all but these scant traces of their existence鈥攖hat it would plunder their homes, their entire village, then come for what remained of them.鈥� 鈥擡.H.A.

Bonus Read: (2023), Lauren Groff鈥檚 raw survival novel of a young servant girl鈥檚 flight from a colony into the wilderness in the 1600s.

Washington: The Boys in the Boat, by Daniel James Brown (2013)

Turn to this for a fun, engagingly written story about the University of Washington men鈥檚 crew team in Depression-era Seattle, Washington. The climax is the boys鈥� gold-medal race in the pre鈥揥orld War II Third Reich (not a spoiler; it鈥檚 based on real events), but below the plot of races and training are descriptions of the Emerald City and its broader region that still ring true. Granted, an enterprising lad can鈥檛 pay his way through the University of Washington (as protagonist Joe Rantz does) by working at logging camps on the Olympic Peninsula over the summer anymore. But quiet mornings on Lake Washington before practice evoke the same feeling that walking along the Montlake Cut does today: that the city isn鈥檛 so much surrounded by a beautiful natural environment as interwoven with it. 鈥擬iyo McGinn

Bonus Read: The beautiful memoir by fly-fisherman and Patagonia ambassador Dylan Tomine, (2012), of a year of foraging with his young family on an island in the Salish Sea.

Washington, D.C.: Spring in Washington, by Louis J. Halle (1947)

My hometown is better known for producing self-serving memoirs than great tales of adventure. The exception is this wondrous narrative, penned by a disgruntled federal bureaucrat. Bored with his job, Louis Halle became an explorer of the urban wilderness, sallying forth on his bicycle through the woods of Rock Creek Park and along the tidal fringes of the Potomac, counting mergansers and osprey in its hidden marshes before circling back toward his desk at the State Department. Spring in Washington chronicles the changes he observed over the first six months of 1945, which also happened to be the final chapter of World War II. The war goes unmentioned, but the metaphor of renewal and rebirth hangs on every page as he watches the natural world reawaken around him. Halle has been compared to Thoreau, but he was not turning his back on society; Spring in Washington is about learning how to see what is right under our noses. 鈥淚 must get out of my cell, out of doors, out into the open world where I can see again,鈥� he writes. 鈥擝.G.

West Virginia: The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia, by Emma Copley Eisenberg (2020)

In the summer of 1980, two young women hitchhiking to the annual Rainbow Gathering were found murdered in a forest clearing in Pocahontas County, West Virginia. Part true crime, part memoir, The Third Rainbow Girl delves into West Virginia鈥檚 proudly hardscrabble mountain communities, into questions of misogyny and sexuality, and into what made the victims, and so many others in these mountains, want to drop out. The title refers both to a woman who decided not to accompany her friends to the festival and to Eisenberg herself, who has spent years visiting or living in Pocahontas County. 鈥淭here is a deep awareness here of what the rest of America thinks a life should look like鈥攖he newest model, the fanciest vacation, the highest paying job with the best retirement plan鈥攁nd, among many, a rejection of that life.鈥� 鈥擡.H.A.

Wisconsin: Going Somewhere: A Bicycle Journey Across America, by Brian Benson (2014)

I picked up this memoir in the wobbly time after college graduation, when I, like Benson鈥檚 narrative self, was scrounging ideas for how to scaffold my hazy future. I liked his plan: to bike across America with a new partner, pedaling west from his hometown in northern Wisconsin. It didn鈥檛 take many pages for me to fall into fantasy, fixating on how to experience the world they cycled through. Because I had never been to Wisconsin before鈥攏or, somehow, read much about it鈥攎y first reaction to the lush detail was skepticism. How had I missed that you could 鈥渞ead a book on a bed of pine duff鈥� or eat blueberries beside a lake 鈥渘estled in a carpet of coniferous bog鈥�? Though Going Somewhere unspools across America, it鈥檚 the first third of the book, in Benson鈥檚 home state, that鈥檚 lingered with me. I鈥檝e since dog-eared the pages as an ad hoc guide for my own hiking and cross-country ski adventures there. It鈥檚 a joy to read about a place, but it鈥檚 a thrill when the words compel you to put the book down, get out a map, and start planning a trip. 鈥擡rica Berry

Wyoming: Close Range: Stories, by Annie Proulx (1999)

It鈥檚 appropriate that Annie Proulx should have the last word after her mic-drop short story about the love between two cowboys, Brokeback Mountain, which appears in this collection. The master of short fiction lived in Wyoming for close to 20 years, on a ranch called Bird Cloud on the North Platte River. The hard men and women of her Wyoming stories鈥攖hree volumes in all鈥攕cratch out a living, freeze to death, fall in love, and fight the state鈥檚 scouring wind. That rough wind ultimately carried Proulx away as well. She sold Bird Cloud and returned to the New England of her childhood; now she lives in New Hampshire. 鈥擡.H.A.

The post Our Favorite Outdoor 黑料吃瓜网 Books for Every State appeared first on 黑料吃瓜网 Online.

This fall is packed with new outdoor media releases: books on calving glaciers and the surprising biology of asphalt, documentaries that will take you from the summit of Mount Everest to the hollers of Appalachia, and podcasts that offer thrilling tales and life lessons from outdoor mishaps. Here are our top picks for what to read, watch, and listen to between your adventures this season.

Books

The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth, by Elizabeth Rush ($30)

For a chunk of ice containing enough meltwater to raise the oceans two feet, not much is known about Antarctica鈥檚 Thwaites Glacier. That is why, in 2019, Elizabeth Rush joined an international group of scientists on the first expedition to its calving edge. 鈥淚 wanted to stand alongside that massive glacier,鈥� she writes in The Quickening, 鈥渨anted to witness freshly formed bergs dropping down into the ocean like stones, so that I might know in my body what my mind still struggled to grasp: Antarctica鈥檚 going to pieces has the power to rewrite all the maps.鈥� The journey takes place as Rush is about to start a family, and she grapples with the idea of bringing a child into our climate disaster-in-progress. Rush, whose previous book, , was a Pulitzer finalist, writes with urgency and humor about this consequential world of ice鈥攁nd the life that will soon be growing inside her.

The Race to Be Myself, by Caster Semenya ($30)

Birth is, of course, central to the story of South African runner Caster Semenya, the two-time Olympic gold medalist subjected to invasive gender testing after winning the 800-meter event at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin. In her memoir, due out in October, Semenya recounts how she was accepted as a tomboy in her rural village, only to later experience humiliating speculation about her body when her test results, which revealed elevated testosterone levels and some physical characteristics of both sexes, were leaked to the press. Forced for years to take estrogen to continue her career, in 2018 she was effectively barred from competition by stricter testosterone rules. Since then the conversation about gender has only grown more urgent as questions linger about the treatment of her and other female African runners with naturally high testosterone levels. Her ordeal, she writes, 鈥渉as affected me in ways I cannot describe, although I will try.鈥� In this defiant, moving book, she succeeds.

Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet, by Ben Goldfarb ($30)

鈥淟ike most people, I at once cherish animals and think nothing of piloting a thousand-pound death machine,鈥� writes Ben Goldfarb in this way-more-fun-than-it-should-be book about asphalt, out in September. The author of , Goldfarb has a lot to say about our national compulsion to pave a path from everywhere to everywhere else, cutting off migration routes and turning cars into superpredators. He finds hope in innovative wildlife crossings that have created a new bridge-and-tunnel crowd of coyotes, toads, and elk herds. Whether he鈥檚 tracking pronghorn antelope through Wyoming or tossing off asides about hedgehogs (鈥渟mall, plodding, nocturnal 鈥� practically designed to be roadkill鈥�), a road trip with him is worth every fascinating mile.

True West: Myth and Mending on the Far Side of America, by Betsy Gaines Quammen ($27)

The dangerous myth of the West as an endless frontier is still alive, writes historian Betsy Gaines Quammen in True West, out in October. But today it draws a new kind of freedom seekers, from adventurers eager to 鈥渞ip, shred, bag, and slay鈥� its peaks and rivers to anti-vaxxers determined to raise a middle finger to the feds. Quammen, author of , has spent years investigating a region that 鈥渉as become ever hotter, drier, angrier, and more politically polarized,鈥� from the Idaho origins of the Oath Keepers鈥攚hose members stormed the U.S. Capitol in 2021鈥攖o the billionaire recreationists holed up at Montana鈥檚 Yellowstone Club. But Quammen treats all her subjects with empathy, and she doesn鈥檛 look down on anyone. 鈥淭he West is more than a playground or a storage site awaiting resource extraction,鈥� she writes. 鈥淚t鈥檚 more than a second home or a selfie. It鈥檚 a land of many cultures. It鈥檚 a place of countless generations.鈥�

Sun House, by David James Duncan ($35)

Perhaps all is not lost on the frontier. In this big-hearted 鈥渆astern Western,鈥� cult favorite David James Duncan explores what might happen if we dished up some karmic payback to the white-guy corporations looking to 鈥渄ivvy up, privatize, cage, clear-cut, dam, drain, mine, frack, and detonate鈥� every last acre. This is Duncan鈥檚 first novel since his bestsellers (1983) and (1992). It鈥檚 a cosmic trip that braids together a dozen lives that cross and gurgle like the fictional Elkmoon River. Do we object that it isn鈥檛 until page 363 that these freethinkers begin to converge on Montana鈥檚 Elkmoon Range? We do not. Do we care that the text is 764 pages, not counting an extensive bibliography? Indeed we do, but in a good way, because it allows us to ride this magic bus as long as we can. Stoke the cabin fire and pour some whiskey over a chunk of glacial ice. You鈥檙e not coming out until you鈥檝e finished this one.

Films

Pasang: In the Shadow of Everest

The inspiring, ultimately tragic story of Pasang Lhamu Sherpa is a lesser-known chapter in mountaineering history. Pasang perished while descending Everest in 1993, after becoming the first Nepali woman to summit. Director Nancy Svendsen first met Pasang鈥檚 daughter, Dawa Futi Sherpa鈥攁n executive producer on 鈥攁 dozen years ago. Together they deliver a subtle, sensitive tracing of Pasang鈥檚 life against the backdrop of Nepal in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Those were pivotal years in the country鈥檚 quest for democracy and in the development of modern commercial climbing on Everest, which is powered largely by the hard work and heroism of unheralded, underpaid teams of Sherpas. Pasang was an uneducated Sherpa woman from a small village; her vast ambition and determination were truly singular and not always appreciated. What emerges is an incredibly timely story. In Pasang鈥檚 quest to empower Sherpas in the climbing industry, and both women and Sherpas in Nepali society, she was a trailblazer. Limited theatrical release in September; streaming on Amazon by November

Explorer: Lost in the Arctic

The Northwest Passage has lured adventurers for centuries, but the prospect of a sea route above the North American continent has remained mostly a deadly fantasy. In the overheated present, dwindling summer ice pack has now made the journey feasible, though hardly easy. In June 2022, writer and adventurer Mark Synnott assembled a team鈥攊ncluding filmmaker Renan Ozturk鈥攁nd set out from Maine aboard Synnott鈥檚 47-foot sailboat. Their goal was to retrace a famously failed 1845 British expedition led by Sir John Franklin, whose two ships and 129 crew members vanished after their ships became stuck in the ice near King William Island. It鈥檚 a mystery that has long fascinated polar historians, and Synnott and crew go to great lengths to solve it, culminating in a search for Franklin鈥檚 rumored grave. The voyage is full of tribulation鈥攂ad weather, equipment failure, unreliable maps, and, in a dire historical echo, a close call with becoming icebound themselves鈥攁nd the result is a worthy follow-up to Synnott and Ozturk鈥檚 collaborations for National Geographic鈥檚 Explorer series, Lost on Everest and The Last Tepui. Streaming now on Disney+ and Hulu

King Coal

You may think you know the story of coal in Appalachia, but Elaine McMillion Sheldon鈥檚 subtle and affecting tribute to her home region mixes closely observed documentary reporting with imaginative, poetic material to arrive at something new, though no less heartbreaking. Sheldon, the daughter and granddaughter of coal miners, is well positioned to dive into the human stories that show what coal has given and taken from Appalachian communities. is an ode to a place that sees beauty amid the harshness, but isn鈥檛 blind to the scars on the land or the damage that has carried through the generations. Environmental docs can feel stripped of nuance, all stridency and condemnation, but Sheldon uses every tool in the filmmaking kit鈥攆rom sound design to music to the casting of several endearing young locals鈥攖o successfully connect her audience to the beauty and tragedy of her home. Theatrical release August 11; available on Amazon, Google Play , and iTunes in mid-October

Full Circle

Director Josh Berman invites us into the lives and worlds of Barry Corbet and Trevor Kennison, two men left paralyzed by spinal injuries that resulted from snow-sports accidents. Each narrative is inspirational鈥攖he film鈥檚 subtitle is 鈥攂ut Berman doesn鈥檛 shy from the harsh realities of life as a paraplegic. Corbet built an impressive climbing and skiing r茅sum茅 in the 1950s and 1960s; one of North America鈥檚 most famous ski runs, Corbet鈥檚 Couloir in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, was named after him. In May 1968, he was paralyzed from the waist down after a helicopter crash while filming in the Aspen backcountry. Kennison鈥檚 pre-injury experience was shorter, but he found the same joy in the mountains, and suffered a similar spinal injury while snowboarding in the Colorado backcountry in 2014. Corbet refused to slow down, making films and learning to kayak; for Kennison, the discovery of sit-skiing gave him back the sense of purpose Corbet found on the river. In a post-injury triumph that Corbet, who passed away in 2004, would鈥檝e been proud of, the film opens with Kennison dropping into Corbet鈥檚 Couloir on a sit-ski during the Kings and Queens of Corbet鈥檚 contest in 2019. Nationwide theatrical release in late October; streaming release in early 2024

Podcasts

FOGO: Fear of Going 黑料吃瓜网

Ivy Le is a self-described indoor person, and her reluctance to host this unusual nature show from Spotify Studios is evidenced by the many sighs, screams, and ughs she sprinkles into her attempts to understand the appeal of the whole outdoors thing. Le takes friends and experts out on educational adventures, which include learning to camp (season one) and learning to hunt (season two). There鈥檚 a trip to REI with her friend Jeff Zhao that鈥檚 narrated like a nature documentary; a hike with outdoor activist Roc铆o Villalobos; and an archery lesson in which Le silences her doubters and hits a target while doing an Asian squat. Whether you鈥檙e new to outdoor recreation or a seasoned pro, the podcast is a delight thanks to Le, a charmingly vulnerable asker of deep questions about communing with nature. For example: What鈥檚 the difference between walking and hiking? 鈥淗iking is sexier,鈥� outdoor educator Diane Carrico tells her, 鈥渁nd it feels like you鈥檙e bragging.鈥�

Thru

Whether he鈥檚 fighting off a nasty bout of norovirus or encountering a mystery animal on an early-morning hike, podcast producer Cody Hofmockel is never truly alone during his preparation for and through-hike of the Pacific Crest Trail. Hofmockel started on April 23, 2022, and recorded a remarkable amount of his experience to create a nearly day-by-day audio documentary. Produced by QCode and Spoke Media, the podcast consists of brief episodes that take us into the ups and downs of trail life: making friends, devising silly games to pass the time, and no small amount of what happens when that virus hits his stomach. Hofmockel, who recovered from substance-abuse issues in 2020 and 鈥渞econnected with his newly sober mind鈥� during the hike, also ponders the reasons for walking 2,653 miles and gives colorful fellow through-hikers plenty of mic time. Listening to Thru feels like getting deftly produced voice notes from a friend who鈥檚 somewhere between Mexico and Canada.

Women鈥檚 Work

Ashley Ahearn spends much of the first episode of Women鈥檚 Work鈥�a production of Boise State Public Radio鈥攇etting dirty looks from an extremely pregnant ewe named Babette. Ahearn, an environmentalist and chronicler of life in the West, gets right into the middle of things for an on-the-ground look at how our food systems should be reformed. As cattle rancher Cory Carman tells her: 鈥淥ur limitation is not that we can鈥檛 feed the world, it鈥檚 that we can鈥檛 imagine what it鈥檚 going to take.鈥� From Wyoming to eastern Washington, Ahearn visits women ranchers who are rethinking how to manage land and livestock. Kelsey Scott of the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe champions food sovereignty with grass-fed beef, and 14-year-old Maloi Lannan learns the ropes of regenerative ranching while helping out at her family鈥檚 sheep farm. Each offers ideas for making food production more just and sustainable鈥攁nd shows how some ranchers are already fighting for a better future.

Wilder

So many children grew up devouring Laura Ingalls Wilder鈥檚 autobiographical Little House on the Prairie books鈥攐nly to look back and find that the series doesn鈥檛 always hold up. In Wilder, host Glynnis MacNicol reckons with the legacy of the most well-known young-adult depiction of the late-19th-century American West. The show, produced by iHeartPodcasts, is nothing short of comprehensive. In the first, nearly hour-long episode, MacNicol visits a Little House fan meetup in a town where many Hmong immigrants found a home, thanks in large part to their love of the books, and discusses the books鈥� racist depictions of Indigenous people with Debbie Reese, founder of American Indians in Children鈥檚 Literature. MacNicol embarks on an ambitious journey鈥攈itting all the places Wilder lived, in six states鈥攄igging into her own memory of the books and attempting to understand the relevance of the series in the 21st century. As her friend and coproducer Jo Piazza puts it: 鈥淭he many ways that Laura seems flawed are also the many ways that America is flawed.鈥�

Lost Hills: The Dark Prince

New Yorker staff writer Dana Goodyear is the bard of Malibu, California, explaining the swanky town鈥檚 dark underbelly over three seasons of Lost Hills. The latest introduces the famous and controversial surfer Miki Dora, who dazzled and terrorized the city鈥檚 shores from the 1950s through the 鈥�70s. 鈥淗is nickname was Da Cat,鈥� says surfer Denny Aaberg, 鈥渂ecause he had feline grace on a wave and not because he was a cat burglar, but I guess he was that, too.鈥� From a neglected childhood to multiple crimes that put him on the run for seven years, Dora鈥檚 story is by no means a simple hero鈥檚 journey. Goodyear delves into the misogynistic and xenophobic nature of his territorial surf philosophy, and calls on a who鈥檚 who of surfing鈥攆rom Kelly Slater to Kathy Kohner-Zuckerman鈥攖o talk about the life and times of a man who embodies a legendary era in the sport, along with its worst impulses.

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Three years ago, Sasha DiGiulian was in pain. The flexibility that had launched her from a teenage sensation at her local climbing gym to the sport鈥檚 overall world champion at age 18 was, she learned, advanced dysplasia. In May 2020, she underwent the first of five surgeries to rebuild both hips.

But as she writes in her upcoming memoir, (due out in September), she learned early on to view struggle as a speed bump, not a barrier.

DiGiulian, a 30-year-old Virginia native who鈥檚 based in Boulder, Colorado, is back to full speed. Last December, she and American Brette Harrington and Matilda S枚derlund of Sweden put up the hardest big-wall ascent by an all-female team鈥擱ayu, in Spain鈥檚 Picos de Europa National Park. Her company, Female Focused 黑料吃瓜网s, coproduced the new film Rayu, as well as , her seven-episode series with 黑料吃瓜网 Watch. Last year she cofounded , using the gluten-free protein recipes she鈥檇 followed for years, and she鈥檚 developing a new route outside Boulder with childhood idol Lynn Hill. Their effort, the first route in the Flatirons established and bolted by women, is being filmed for an HBO documentary.

With so many balls in the air, DiGiulian grounds herself with preparation, organization, and鈥攎ore than anything鈥攖he humility and perspective that only days in the wild can bring.

OUTSIDE: You wanted to write a book ever since you studied creative nonfiction at Columbia.
Why was now the time?
DIGIULIAN: Looking down the barrel of five surgeries and nine months off from climbing, I really had to rethink my purpose. Writing gave me a lot of light through a really dark period. It also gave me a new appreciation for the sport.

It鈥檚 scary to put yourself out there and be open to criticism. But I鈥檝e been judged my entire life, so I鈥檓 like, here鈥檚 my story.

Let鈥檚 talk about awe. How do you find it?
Oh wow, after a big day outside, maybe at night, under a vast, starlit sky. You feel the energy of what you鈥檝e done and the pride and the exhaustion that goes with it.

When I鈥檓 on a long expedition, it鈥檚 such a simple life that I feel really grounded, immersed in the dirt of where I am. I feel the nit and grit of the rock surface. Everything feels alive.

Between those moments in the wild, you鈥檝e got a lot going on. How do you pack so much in?
When I鈥檓 preparing a climb, I鈥檓 planning all the food for five weeks, down to the gram. I鈥檝e always believed that being as organized as possible sets you up for success. It鈥檚 the backbone of how I manage my time.

I have attention deficit disorder, so I take notes during conversations to stay on track. Having control has its negative sides too, but I鈥檓 obsessive about my use of time. If you have a plan A, B, and C, then whatever life throws at you, you鈥檒l be able to fall back on your preparation.

I didn鈥檛 realize you had ADD.
I was diagnosed later in life. I don鈥檛 take medication; I just use mechanisms like writing things down. I鈥檓 a huge sticky-notes person. It鈥檚 hard for me to focus on one thing. But on the rock, I鈥檝e always been able to focus. I say mantras: right hand, left foot, right foot, left hand. It鈥檚 the same in business. With Send Bars, I鈥檓 aware of my extreme weaknesses, so I surround myself with people who balance that.

Why did you decide to make bars?
In high school, I was very particular about what I put into my body, and I went off the deep end a bit. But as I moved away from disordered eating patterns, I got interested in nutrition and decided, I鈥檓 not going to eat this crap on the market. I would blend dates and nuts with vegetable powders. It鈥檚 hard to get vegetables on an adventure, and I have celiac disease, which makes nutrition on expeditions even harder. I wanted to make a product that would be able to fuel people on the go.

Disordered eating tends to come up in sports like climbing and gymnastics, where you need a high strength-to-weight ratio. Do you think women are more susceptible?
Disordered eating has always been an elephant in the room. With women it鈥檚 hush-hush, but male climbers go through it as well. Men will say, I鈥檓 preparing for this climb, so I鈥檓 going to cut ten pounds, and it鈥檚 more like, he鈥檚 just getting ripped.

Women tend to have more shame around it.
With women it鈥檚 like, she鈥檚 cheating鈥攕he鈥檚 just not strong enough. I was criticized for my weight as a teenage climber. And the most hurtful criticism exposes your deepest demons, like someone calling you fat when that鈥檚 your actual fear. I do a lot of work around being healthy, but I still have my moments. When I took time off from climbing, I lost a lot of muscle and started having boobs for the first time. I found myself fighting a lot of negativity, wanting to stay that high-achieving prepubescent girl. Letting go of that past, when so much of it shaped who I am, is difficult. But I鈥檓 creating a new identity based on who I am now.

You鈥檝e always embraced your femininity in a sport that values its dirtbag roots. If you wear makeup or do a lingerie shoot, do people see you as having less cred?
Absolutely. I battle imposter syndrome. There鈥檚 such an old boys鈥� club in climbing. But I鈥檝e learned to be confident in my own lane, removing myself from the insidious little community at the top echelon of our sport. For a long time, I tried to be in the cool club, but I鈥檓 over it. For me, it鈥檚 beyond how you perform on the rock; it鈥檚 about what you do to push the sport forward, not just on the climbing level, but creating a path for everyone to be included.

Is that one of the messages in your 黑料吃瓜网 series No Days Off?
Travel, especially to remote places, has taught me more than any classroom. It has enabled me to feel what we should all feel鈥攖hat we are more than just what we do. We are more than just athletes. There鈥檚 a bigger conversation to be had about the world, one with more far-reaching effects than any route or expedition.

Join DiGiulian as she climbs for a purpose around the world in , available on demand to 黑料吃瓜网+ members on 黑料吃瓜网 Watch.

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Survival can be beautiful. At least that鈥檚 the message from our chilling, funny, and ultimately big-hearted favorite reads this year. From a reality show that goes delightfully wrong to a divorced woman taking to the wild alone, our picks blend science, memoir, and fiction to create a patchwork of the big, scary, bumpy world. It鈥檚 not that things don鈥檛 go wrong鈥攖here is murder in these pages. But after several years of COVID, we can finally sit back with a book that examines the pandemic in the rear-view mirror. And we can remember to look outward and marvel at the changing world around us, even as it burns.

Small Game: A Novel, by Blair Braverman

The not-so-secret little secret about survival reality TV is that there鈥檚 a camera crew there the whole time, munching on granola bars and drinking cool water. But what happens when that setup goes wrong? That鈥檚 the premise behind 黑料吃瓜网 contributing editor Blair Braverman鈥檚 debut novel, Small Game, in which the participants of the show Civilization brave the dense Wisconsin woods in faux-prehistoric tunics and sandals. Braverman, a dogsledder and author of the 2016 memoir Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube, is no survival slouch herself; she appeared on Discovery鈥檚 Naked and Afraid in 2019. The deal with Civilization, she writes here, 鈥渨as that they鈥檇 found one another in the wilderness, this group of strangers, and over the course of six weeks would be tasked with building a new kind of community, something pure and sustainable and right. They would forgo all comforts, so that viewers didn鈥檛 have to. They would be one with the forest. They would find a way to live.鈥� Or maybe they wouldn鈥檛.

Breathless: The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus, by David Quammen

Breathless is a different kind of reality thriller, scarier and far more chilling. A finalist for the National Book Award, it recounts, as the title suggests, virologists鈥� desperate attempts to decode the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. After decades on the natural science beat, including as 黑料吃瓜网鈥檚 Natural Acts columnist, Quammen has slogged through jungles and bat caves with virus detectives, and is singularly equipped to chronicle the tik tok of their work during the pandemic. Confined to Zoom interviews, he wasn鈥檛 able to get out into the wilds he鈥檚 explored in his previous work. But what he brought back has a terrifying beauty nonetheless. Viruses are like fire, he writes, 鈥渢he dark angels of evolution, terrific and terrible,鈥� without which 鈥渢he immense biological diversity gracing our planet would collapse like a beautiful wooden house with every nail abruptly removed.鈥�

Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific Journey, by Florence Williams

What does it mean to have a broken heart? Florence Williams never set out to answer that question until her husband told her their marriage was over. Reeling both emotionally and physically, she set out to understand her trauma through the lens of her work as a science journalist. The result illuminates what our minds and bodies really go through when we split, and what it means to set out alone. In Williams鈥檚 case, that journey included setting out in a canoe down Utah鈥檚 Green River. 鈥�What did I really want to do?鈥� she writes. 鈥淚 wanted, of course, to be fixed鈥攖o transform into a woman ready to take on the rest of her life, to launch my boat as a means of launching myself into a better future. I wanted to individuate away from my moribund, fossilized identity as part of a couple. To do that, I wanted to access my bravery, something women of my generation aren鈥檛 often taught.鈥� Don鈥檛 miss out on the , an immersive experience named as one of Apple鈥檚 best audiobooks of 2022. Just don鈥檛 read it when you鈥檙e still mid-breakup: the early moments of Williams鈥檚 divorce will rip your heart out.听

Riverman: An American Odyssey, by Ben McGrath

A journey down the Green River would be just another jaunt for Dick Conant, the itinerant paddler at the heart of Ben McGrath鈥檚 excellent Riverman. As we wrote here in April, Conant 鈥渇irst took to the nation鈥檚 rivers in 1999 at age 49; living in Boise, Idaho, fed up with everything, he bought a plastic canoe at Walmart, plopped it into the Yellowstone River, and headed for the Gulf of Mexico.鈥� But just months after McGrath met Conant by chance on the Hudson River, the paddler went missing in the swamps of North Carolina, leaving an overstuffed red canoe and a slip of paper bearing McGrath鈥檚 number. An overall-clad fellow with a big white beard, Conant became a sort of folk hero in a riverine America of drifters and good Samaritans far from our divisive country today. 鈥淭he generosity and kindness,鈥� McGrath writes, 鈥渢he sense of community, amid a nation that seemed otherwise to be pulling apart at the seams鈥攚ere a large part of what had so struck me when visiting with Conant beneath the Hudson Palisades.鈥�

Trailed: One Woman鈥檚 Quest to Solve the Shenandoah Murders, by Kathryn Miles

In May 1996, two hikers disappeared in Virginia鈥檚 Shenandoah National Park; rangers ultimately discovered them dead in their sleeping bags inside a slashed-open tent. The victims, Lollie Winans and Julie Williams, were a young couple on a week-long backcountry trek. After five long years, a suspect was finally indicted. But due to contradictory DNA evidence, the case against him was quietly dismissed. More years passed, and the investigation was still stalled when Miles鈥攁n 黑料吃瓜网 contributor, avid hiker, and, like Winans, an alumna of Maine鈥檚 Unity College鈥攂ecame obsessed with the case. 鈥淭he truth was,鈥� she writes, 鈥淚 had become feverish, if not altogether frantic, in my attempts to advance the case.鈥� Miles ultimately comes to believe the likely perpetrator was a serial killer who had already died in jail. But her zeal in finding justice for Winans and Williams is welcome in a world where lesbian couples still face violence in the wild, most recently the murders of outside Moab, Utah, in 2021. As John Grisham writes in a blurb on Trailed鈥檚 back cover, 鈥淭he truth is still buried. I couldn鈥檛 put it down.鈥�

The Last Chairlift, by John Irving

Fortunately for 黑料吃瓜网 readers, one of America鈥檚 most readable novelists is also a lifelong skier, with two grandchildren on the U.S. Ski Team. So it was with delight that outdoor enthusiasts greeted The Last Chairlift, his 15th novel, his first in seven years, and what he says will be the last of his major works. For Irving fans, the book brings plenty of his trademark empathy, accidental death, sexual politics, and haunted family dynamics. In this case the ghosts are literal, at Aspen鈥檚 Hotel Jerome, where the main character decamps to try to understand his mother, a ski racer who got pregnant with him as a teenager. Some critics have called The Last Chairlift a bit overstuffed. But when you鈥檙e snowed at a ski lodge this winter, what鈥檚 another 900 delicious pages?听

Shutter: A Novel, by Ramona Emerson

What鈥檚 a police thriller set in Albuquerque doing on this list? It鈥檚 a departure from the usual outdoor canon but a fun one, a companion to the recent Indigenous stories being told on screen, from Hulu鈥檚 Reservation Dogs to the AMC series Dark Winds, which follows writer Tony Hillerman鈥檚 Navajo detectives Leaphorn and Chee. In this gritty thriller, which was long listed for the National Book Award, forensic photographer Rita Todacheeneis haunted by ghosts. They appear to her at crime scenes, demanding that their deaths be avenged, and at her grandmother鈥檚 house back on the Navajo Nation, whose wide desert skies Rita misses deeply. Emerson, who is herself Din茅 and a former forensic photographer, is also an Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker. 鈥淚 was drawn to make films about my community because those stories weren鈥檛 being told,鈥� Emerson . 鈥淢ore importantly, if they were being told, they were being told by people outside of our communities.鈥�

Dinosaurs: A Novel, by Lydia Millet

Just about every year, it seems, novelist Lydia Millet comes out with another sharp, slim masterpiece of climate fiction. In 2020, it was The Children鈥檚 Bible; this year it鈥檚 Dinosaurs, both finalists for the National Book Award. In this, her 13th novel, wealthy New Yorker Gil decides he鈥檚 done with the city; he chooses to move to Arizona based on some drone footage of the desert. 鈥淏ut he wanted to feel the distance in his bones and skin,鈥� Millet writes, 鈥渢he ground beneath his feet. Not step onto a plane and land in five hours after a whiskey and a nap.鈥� So he walks, the whole way, for five months. But the the narrative picks up after that, once he arrives in the suburbs of Phoenix. The action here is much more interior, from Gil鈥檚 relationship with the neighbors in their glass house to the birds disappearing in their neighborhood. Millet, who still holds down her day job at the Center for Biological Diversity in Tucson, is one of the smartest minds around, an insistent voice on our responsibilities as humans in the larger world.

An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, by Ed Yong

Did you know that leopard urine smells like popcorn, and stressed-out frogs can smell like peanut butter or curry? These wonders merely scratch the surface of Ed Yong鈥檚 marvelous look (sniff?) at the sensory experiences of animals. Yong, a British-American science journalist who won a Pulitzer Prize for his work in the Atlantic, has emerged as one of our brightest science writers. His first book, I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life, looked at the universe inside the human body. This one looks outward, at our fellow creatures. And while it compiles enough amazing information that your loved ones will ask you to stop reading factoids aloud, that鈥檚 not the point. 鈥淲hen we pay attention to other animals,鈥� writes Yong, 鈥渙ur own world expands and deepens.鈥� Given how myopic humans can be, there is great value in walking in someone else鈥檚 paws for once. 鈥淪ome scientists study the senses of other animals to better understand ourselves,鈥� Yong writes. 鈥淥thers reverse-engineer animal senses to create new technologies鈥�. I鈥檓 not interested in either. Animals are not just stand-ins for humans or fodder for brainstorming sessions. They have worth in themselves.鈥� Rarely has it been more evident than here.听

Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World, by Barry Lopez

Perhaps no one has paid more patient attention, as he himself puts it, to the beautiful immensity of life on earth than Barry Lopez. This collection is his last, published posthumously after his death from cancer on Christmas Day 2020. Many of these essays have appeared before, in literary magazines like Granta and 贬补谤辫别谤鈥檚, particularly the wrenching 鈥淪liver of Sky,鈥� about the sexual abuse he experienced as a child. But others are unpublished, and their arrangement paints, as he writes here about Wallace Stegner, 鈥渢he measure of a life.鈥� In Lopez鈥檚 case, that life took him from Antactica to the Yukon and ultimately to the banks of Oregon鈥檚 McKenzie River, his home base for 50 years. It鈥檚 a heartbreaking sort of foreshadowing to read his descriptions of those lush woods, knowing that in the fall of 2020, just months before his death, the Holiday Farm Fire claimed 17o,000 acres of that forest. Lopez鈥檚 home, he wrote on Facebook, was 鈥渄amaged but still standing.鈥� (Like so many of us today.) All of this may sound like a bit of a downer, but believe me, it鈥檚 not. 鈥淭he central project of my adult life as a writer,鈥� Lopez writes, 鈥渋s to know and love what we have been given, and to urge others to do the same.鈥� He warns us not to 鈥済ive in to the temptation to despair.鈥�

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This story update is part of the听黑料吃瓜网 Classics, a series highlighting the best writing we鈥檝e ever published, along with author interviews and other exclusive bonus materials. Get access to all of the 黑料吃瓜网 Classics听when you sign up for 黑料吃瓜网+.

When Wells鈥檚 older brother, Dan, came along, the trips could escalate into bitter feuding. The Tower boys had fought all their lives, with fists, knives, canoe paddles, and, once, scalding-hot brownie batter.

Such sibling love is also a hallmark of family travel. Thankfully, the Tower boys have outgrown their hatred, but readers benefited from it in 鈥淢别濒迟诲辞飞苍鈥� and several other Wells stories, including one in which he and Dan competed in Venice鈥檚 famed Vogalonga regatta, with predictably catastrophic results.

Wells talked to 黑料吃瓜网 from his home in Durham, North Carolina, where he lives with his wife and six-year-old son. A prolific magazine writer and an author of short stories鈥攕ome of which are collected in his first book, 鈥�he鈥檚 busy these days as a screenwriter. Netflix recently bought his original screenplay for Pain Hustlers, a film about pharmaceuticals, conspiracies, and the American dream, which will star Emily Blunt.

Elizabeth Hightower Allen, who interviewed Wells for this update, asked him who should be chosen to play the Tower men if Hollywood ever makes a film of 鈥淢eltdown.鈥� 鈥淥h, John Lithgow for my dad,鈥� he said. 鈥淒anny McBride for my brother. And for me, maybe Peter Sarsgaard. Unless he鈥檚 too hunky. If that鈥檚 the case, maybe Bud Cort from Harold and Maude.鈥�

OUTSIDE: First, how is your dad? In 鈥淢别濒迟诲辞飞苍鈥� he was in remission from lymphoma, and when I read one of your later stories, he was going through chemo again. I got a little worried.
TOWER: He鈥檚 good. His recurring illness was kind of a gift in that way鈥攊t led us to operate under the idea that he was going to drop dead at any moment. We would take all these trips and be acutely conscious of how much we mattered to one another. Somehow he just kept on ticking. He鈥檚 going to be 80 next year. I was recently down on the North Carolina coast with him and my son, Jed, fishing together. So yeah, we鈥檙e lucky.

What was the first trip you took once he was diagnosed?
It was a pretty scary situation initially鈥攈e was given a super bad prognosis, because he had a weird kind of lymphoma. But my stepmother did an amazing job researching hospitals. He was treated at MD Anderson in Houston and went into remission pretty quickly. So when we decided to take a big trip, we chose the Gal谩pagos, which seemed far and extravagant. I think maybe we were thinking he wasn鈥檛 going to survive. Later we went to France, and Southeast Asia a few times when he was teaching in Bangkok. But the Greenland trip was the most exotic one we鈥檝e done.

Where would you place it on the continuum of awful family vacations?
Well, there was a great one, before my dad鈥檚 mortality scare, when he was teaching in New Zealand. We went out to Great Barrier Island, near Auckland, where a friend of his had built a little cabin in the woods. Before that we mostly cruised around to vineyards鈥攖he idea was to fish and hang out in the cabin and drink great wine. It was a long hike into the cabin, and we had terrible gear, duffle bags full of clanking bottles. When we finally got there, it started pouring rain. The place had been built out of whatever logs this guy had chopped down and propped into a semi-waterproof structure, and all we could do was hang out in this dank little cabin.

Our first night, we drank too much and crawled into a tiny bed we had to share. It just smelled gross; this was not a sumptuous set of digs. When I woke up in the morning, I had what looked like Concord grapes all over my body, and I thought, Oh my God, what鈥檚 the deal here? It turned out it was rodent feces. I jumped out of bed and saw, right where our heads had been, the corpse of this gigantic, bloated, decaying jungle rodent. I鈥檇 had my head on it a little, and my father had been fully using it as a pillow.

I have to ask: Was your dad naked?
Probably, yes. If he wasn鈥檛, it was because I鈥檇 always make him put on something before we shared a bed. Anyway, that experience became kind of the keynote for our trips.

Was your brother there?
Greenland was the first trip Dan joined us for. We argued so spectacularly that a few years later 黑料吃瓜网 sent us to Venice, where we ended up in the Grand Canal, trying to beat each other up in a kayak.

In 鈥淢eltdown,鈥� your dad is adorable, chatting and dancing with people, but also totally embarrassing. Meanwhile, your brother has an epic pout.
Dad鈥檚 a great person to travel with, because he never lets anything get him down. Whatever curveballs the trip throws, he finds a way to turn it all into part of the adventure. Dan really likes to be in control, and when we landed in Iceland he had a vision for what we were going to do鈥攖hat we鈥檇 just hang out in Reykjav铆k for the next ten days and do some day trips. And I was like, Dude, we are doing the story for 黑料吃瓜网. We promised them glaciers and hikes, and that is what鈥檚 happening. He was so irritated that I pulled rank on him. I mean, I default to my own babyish tendencies when I鈥檓 around him. But now that we both have kids, we鈥檝e grown up a bit. I tell myself that we鈥檝e both really matured and we could do a grown-up trip together.

Did it ever get to the point where your brother was like, Stop writing about me?
We had a breakthrough moment with the fact-checking for 鈥淢eltdown.鈥� That trip was so bad, and I guess my assumption had been that Dan would never read the story. I thought, I鈥檒l just get Dad to confirm everything. Then of course the fact-checker, being a scrupulous person, wanted to talk to Dan. God. OK, fine. So I had to call him up and get him on board. It was a whole thing. But after their conversation, Dan called me and said, 鈥淵ou know what? It sounds like you got it right. You were really being a jerk, and I was doing my thing, and you were being a dictatorial schmuck. You told it right.鈥�

You have your own family now, and 黑料吃瓜网 sent you camping in Great Smoky Mountains National Park when your son was a newborn. What鈥檚 your travel dynamic?
None of the Tower-family travel-related psychodrama seems to be part of this next generation. Jed鈥檚 a good traveler. My wife, Erin, is a great traveler. If anything, I think that, in my wife鈥檚 perception, I鈥檓 fairly ineffectual. I cannot Tetris the station-wagon trunk to save my life. What usually happens is that I entertain Jed while my wife says, 鈥淕et outta my hair. I鈥檓 gonna pitch this tent. I can鈥檛 deal with any of your frustrations or opinions about where this needs to be.鈥� And everything seems to work very well.

During the pandemic, we had these van-life fantasies, and now we鈥檙e finally picking up the teardrop camper we ordered. It鈥檚 basically a queen-size bed on wheels, but then we put a small roof tent on top so it can accommodate everybody. There鈥檚 a little fridge and a cooktop and solar. It鈥檚 really gonna boost our game.

In order of travel partners, how would you rank these: father, brother, wife, baby?
I gotta give it to Dad. You always get an adventure with that guy. There have been trips where things went wrong. But often these are trips I am writing about, so in a reverse kind of way, it鈥檚 a gift.

How have those trips changed your relationship?
When I was a kid, I would get so embarrassed, because he was always the guy who would take his clothes off in the parking lot at the tennis court to change. He was just somebody who was unembarrassed, and now I realize it鈥檚 a fantastic quality. This trip we just took down the coast, we did a half day of fishing where there was a guy baiting the hook and casting for you. I鈥檓 such an uptight rule follower, I鈥檓 like, 鈥淭hose are the rules鈥攈e鈥檚 gonna bait and cast. I鈥檓 not gonna do anything.鈥� But my dad was like, 鈥淗ey Jed, let me show you how to cast the rod.鈥� And I鈥檓 thinking, Oh God, is he breaking the rules? But he鈥檚 not. It鈥檚 great. He鈥檚 teaching Jed how to cast.

When Jed gets old enough to write a piece about an adventure with his dad, what do you think he鈥檒l write?
I hope I鈥檓 able to be as fearless and embarrassing as my father. I hope it鈥檚 not My dad is a stick-in-the-mud who鈥檚 not gonna risk casting the reel for fear of offending a boat captain. I probably should consciously start accumulating a list of travel commandments from my dad.

What鈥檚 your advice for traveling with family?
Other than to do it with love in your heart, what more can you say?

The post Read This Before Traveling with Family appeared first on 黑料吃瓜网 Online.

Editor鈥檚 note: 黑料吃瓜网 will be hosting a live Q&A with David Quammen on Thursday, October 13, at 6 P.M. Mountain Time. Join us on Zoom .

In March 2020, I was busy devouring , a novel by Lawrence Wright about a deadly new virus that shuts down the globe as epidemiologists engage in a frantic race to isolate the pathogen. That plot, of course, was also playing out in real life at that very moment. Nearly three years later, we have听a compelling new nonfiction scientific thriller about SARS-CoV-2: by science writer David Quammen.

The book is already , and for longtime 黑料吃瓜网 readers, it鈥檚 something of a dream come true (even though it鈥檚 about a nightmare). With more than four decades of reporting on the natural world under his belt鈥攕tarting as 黑料吃瓜网鈥檚 Natural Acts columnist in 1981鈥擰uammen was perfectly placed to listen in on the conversation as scientists and virologists began rapid-fire pinging each other in December 2019鈥攁t first with rumors of an unidentified pathogen, and then with snippets of genetic code鈥攖rying to get a bead on something that, said one, looked 鈥渧ery, very similar to a SARS coronavirus.鈥�

The emergence of a 鈥渘ovel鈥� virus was, of course, a surprise to none of them. As Quammen wrote in 2012 in his similarly terrifying book , infectious disease scientists have been warning for years about the very real possibility of a pandemic caused by a virus 鈥渟pilling over鈥� from the nonhuman world. That鈥檚 what caused AIDs, Ebola, Marburg, MERS, Nipah, West Nile, and others听serious maladies that Quammen chronicled in in the book. (The main lesson I took from Spillover: never, ever go anywhere near a bat cave.)

In Breathless, Quammen writes that virologists 鈥渉ad for decades seen such an event coming, like a small, dark dot on the horizon of western Nebraska, rumbling toward us at indeterminable speed and with indeterminable force, like a runaway chicken truck or an eighteen-wheeler loaded with rolled steel.鈥�

That鈥檚 the third line of the book. It only gets crazier from there.

Quammen would probably disagree with describing Breathless as a thriller. 鈥淭his is a book about the science of SARS-CoV-2,鈥� he writes. 鈥淭he medical crisis of COVID-19, the heroism of health care workers and other people performing essential services, the unjustly distributed human suffering, and the egregious political malfeasance that made it all worse鈥攖hose are topics for other books.鈥� (For those stories, try , by Michael Lewis, or , by Lawrence Wright.)

Quammen writes clearly, accurately, and even conversationally about the science, from the nomenclature conventions of virus variants to a virus鈥檚 鈥渞eceptor binding domains.鈥� One of the COVID-19 virus鈥檚 most nefarious adaptations is something called a furin cleavage site, which signals the infamous spike protein to change shape, as Quammen puts it, 鈥渓ike a Transformer robot metamorphosing suddenly into a truck.鈥�

As Quammen warns us at times, the scientific going can get tough鈥攕ome of the explanations are very technical. But just when your eyes glaze over, he is there to gently shake you awake. At one point, after I鈥檇 zoned out reading a calculation for herd immunity (鈥渢hreshold = 1 鈥� 1/R0,鈥�), he began the next paragraph with the words: 鈥�He prints equation. Eyes roll back in heads. But no, wait, look how easy this is.鈥�

One of the best things about Breathless is Quammen鈥檚 familiarity with the remote areas where viruses tend to emerge. His beat, after all, has always been the wild. He has traveled with disease cowboys, as they鈥檙e sometimes called, into caves and around remote villages, looking for viral hosts. He has seen the crowded markets full of palm civets, pangolins, and raccoon dogs, with 鈥渕ultiple animals packed into small cages, stacked atop one another, sharing their fears and their bodily fluids, while hundreds of people worked and lived and ate amid the jumble, toddlers ran back and forth amid offal from butchered animals, [and] families slept in cramped lofts above their shops.鈥�

That global experience gives him compassion for countries where virus spillovers tend to happen, and sympathy for world leaders angry that Americans are getting fourth and fifth shots while many low-income countries have had none. He demonizes no animal, not even the horseshoe bat from which SARS-CoV-2 likely emerged, nor the critically endangered pangolin, a group of whom died in a wildlife rescue center of an unknown respiratory disease, 鈥渋nactive and sobbing.鈥� Even viruses themselves get their due. They are like fire, he writes, 鈥渢he dark angels of evolution, terrific and terrible,鈥� without which 鈥渢he immense biological diversity gracing our planet would collapse like a beautiful wooden house with every nail abruptly removed.鈥�

The heart of the book is a meticulous investigation into the origins of SARS-CoV-2, and Quammen turns over every stone. In what will likely be the most provocative part of the book, he spends serious time examining and debunking the theory, ultimately rejected by scientists, that SARS-CoV-2, escaped from a lab.

Likewise, he doesn鈥檛 merely roll his eyes at the early claims surrounding cures like the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin. Ivermectin, he writes, is a trusted tool among veterinarians and a medicine that won its inventors a Nobel Prize. Very few authors could write the following sentence: 鈥淚鈥檝e taken the stuff myself, in small dosage, when I was walking across swamps and forest in the Republic of the Congo and Gabon, being bitten continually by blackflies, and hoping to avoid river blindness.鈥�

It just doesn鈥檛 work on COVID-19.

Luckily for the easily scared, some of the most unsettling revelations about SARS-CoV-2,听 are already behind us: the realizations that the virus was airborne and that asymptomatic people could silently spread it; those early CDC tests that didn鈥檛 work; the long months without effective treatment or vaccine.

And yet, there is still terror to be found in these pages. Breathless introduced me to perhaps the two scariest words in virology: 鈥渟ylvatic cycle.鈥� After the first spillover of a pathogen from the animal kingdom to humans, humans can then infect pets or farm animals, which can then infect wild animals, providing a hiding place for the virus to mutate again. As Quammen writes: 鈥淎 virus with a sylvatic cycle is two-faced, like a traveling salesman with another wife and more kids in another town.鈥�

That is already happening, right here in the United States. During the 2020-2021 hunting season, Iowa wildlife researchers studying chronic wasting disease found SARS-CoV-2 in 82.5 percent of the 97 deer carcasses they tested. The United States, Quammen reminds us, is home to an estimated 25 million white-tailed deer.

This is the world we live in now. 鈥淥ne thing is nearly certain, I believe, amid the swirl of uncertainties,鈥� Quammen writes. 鈥淐OVID-19 won鈥檛 be our last pandemic of the twenty-first century. It probably won鈥檛 be our worst.鈥�

And it isn鈥檛 over yet. On October 4, when Breathless was published, the author was at home with COVID-19.

The post David Quammen鈥檚 鈥楤reathless鈥� Is a Riveting Account of the Race to Understand SARS-CoV-2 appeared first on 黑料吃瓜网 Online.

A decade ago, Cheryl Strayed had $85,000 in credit-card debt. She was a working mom taking care of two small children and grabbing whatever time she could to write. In April of 2012, while on a book tour for her new memoir, she got a text from her husband saying the rent check had bounced.

The book she was promoting was , her account of a 1995 hike covering 1,100 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail鈥攆rom the Mojave Desert in Southern California to the Bridge of the Gods, which crosses the Columbia River between Oregon and Washington. During the hike she was 26 years old, on the trail alone, and fleeing the demons of divorce, heroin, and the untimely loss of her mother to cancer. She was carrying so much baggage, quite literally, that she couldn鈥檛 lift her pack.

Oprah Winfrey was so blown away by Wild that that June. Reese Witherspoon snatched up the movie rights, and she played Strayed herself in . Ten years after its publication, Wild has been translated into 25 languages and sold more than five million copies worldwide.

After the book became a bestseller, a 鈥溾�� was noted on the PCT: permits for long-distance hikers from 2013 to 2019. It changed not just the literature of the outdoors but the outdoors itself. Strayed convinced readers that it was OK to embark on a major adventure鈥攅ven as a woman alone, even as a complete hot mess.

Despite the book鈥檚 popularity, some self-appointed outdoor experts reacted as if Strayed had done something irresponsible. She was unprepared, they said, and her book had lured dangerously ill-equipped newbies onto the trails. Those critics misunderstood Wild, Strayed says now. At its heart, it鈥檚 not a story about through-hiking. It鈥檚 about her life and the universal experiences and lessons it contained. As contributing editor Mark Sundeen wrote in a piece for 黑料吃瓜网 Online just after the book鈥檚 publication, 鈥淒espite its backcover billing, Wild is not a book about hiking, travel, adventure, or nature. It鈥檚 a memoir of redemption鈥攁nd wilderness just happens to be the stage.鈥�

Couldn鈥檛 we all use a little redemption? I caught up with Strayed this spring for a wide-ranging conversation at her home in Portland, Oregon, where she鈥檚 spent the pandemic reading, writing, parenting, and getting outside every damn chance she鈥檚 gotten.

On Wild鈥檚 Success

鈥淚 spent so many years trying to make sense of my mother鈥檚 death and of what that hike meant to me, and I put it all in the book. For it to be received so passionately by so many people in so many different languages and cultures鈥攊t did the thing I鈥檇 always dreamed of as a writer. It reached an audience. It spoke to them. I told a deep story about my life, but what I really wanted to do was tell a deep story about the human experience. Wild spoke to people about their own experience, about their own lives and journeys and struggles, all the times they had to put one foot in front of the other and keep going. And I love that people felt like it gave them permission to go on adventures of their own.鈥�

On the Criticism that She Wasn鈥檛 Prepared for Her PCT Hike

鈥淲hen I listened to some of the arguments lodged against Wild, they were always rooted in elitism, snobbery, and a sense that the wilderness belongs to the people who have the means and the resources to prepare for it with lots of expensive equipment and intensive research. I鈥檓 opposed to that idea. I believe, of course, that you should go out there prepared. My problem wasn鈥檛 so much that I wasn鈥檛 prepared鈥擨 was overprepared. This was 1995, before we had much awareness of ultralight gear and that kind of stuff. But those trails belong to all of us. The more of us there are who love them, the more of us there鈥檒l be to protect them.鈥�

On Her Upbringing Outdoors

鈥淚 had a lot of experience in the wilderness. When I was 12 or 13, my family moved to northern Minnesota. My mother and stepfather bought 40 acres that were really out in the woods, 20 miles from the nearest town鈥攁nd the nearest town was 400 people. My mom would always say we were like modern homesteaders. We built our own house out of fallen trees, and we stripped the bark ourselves. My stepfather was a carpenter, and he brought home scrap wood from his various projects. That鈥檚 what we made our house with. I had the sense that the wilderness was home to me. So instinctually I knew when I reached rock bottom that I needed to go to the wild places that made me feel whole again. I went on the PCT feeling that level of comfort in the wilderness.鈥�

On Wanting to Do Big Things

鈥淪ometimes logistically what you have time for is a week, and it鈥檚 like, Take it! That can be transformative鈥攁 day can be transformative. But what I knew in my heart was that I needed to do something big and incredible and hard and kind of epic. Years later, when I was writing Wild, I realized that what I鈥檇 given myself was a rite of passage. I needed to be tested to see who I was鈥攊n particular, who I was in the world without my mother. I really felt linked to all the cultures throughout time that have given their youth opportunities for rites of passage. They鈥檙e always like, You have to do it alone, it has to be a hard thing, it has to be something that pushes you beyond what you think you can do. For me, going for a long time was part of it. I didn鈥檛 hike the entire Pacific Crest Trail, but I hiked for 94 days. And that was long enough鈥擨 lived outside for a season, and I lived in the wild, and I got myself a long distance by foot. Those were all really big, hard things that ended up being transformative.鈥�

On Through-Hiking Before Cell Phones Existed

鈥淲hen I was writing Wild, I was quite cognizant that I was writing a historical document of what backpacking in America used to be like, because this was before cell phones. I鈥檓 out there with no electronics. I have no music. The only music I have is the music I make myself. I talk about the songs, the jingles, all the things that went through my head because my mind was trying to occupy itself. I would think about deep, important things, but most of the day I鈥檇 be trying to remember the lyrics to, like, Joni Mitchell鈥檚 Blue so I could sing it to myself, or I鈥檇 be thinking in great detail about what it tastes like to bite into a cheeseburger.鈥�

On Feeling Connected to Nature

鈥淲hen you鈥檙e out there every day, looking at the trees and the grasses and the flowers and the mice and the deer and the bears and the snakes, all the things of the world, you realize that you are part of them, you are a part of this world. It鈥檚 the opposite of feeling alienated, where you鈥檙e alone in a crowded room, or you鈥檙e scrolling through Instagram and feeling like you鈥檙e not like anyone else. I felt the opposite of that on the Pacific Crest Trail. I think those experiences make us tender. They make us feel compassionate toward ourselves, and that extends to others as well.鈥�

On the Attachment She Had to Her Backpack, Monster

鈥淎nyone who has done any backpacking at all knows that you develop a relationship with the objects you bring with you. Many took on a sort of talisman quality for me. Frankly, even my backpack did. I nicknamed it Monster because it felt like it had an almost animated presence. It felt like my companion, and it held everything I needed, which is both a literal truth and a metaphorical one. It was my link to survival鈥擨 carried it, and it carried me. It was not until years later, when I was writing Wild, that I was like, Wow, I called it Monster. It鈥檚 literally the monster on my back, on this trail where I鈥檓 dealing with some of my demons and contending with my grief. I still have Monster. I didn鈥檛 know that Monster was going to be famous, so I just brought him up to my attic, and he still lives there. I still use Monster when I go backpacking.鈥�

On How Wild Fits into the Outdoor-Lit Canon

鈥淚 was really conscious that I was writing in a certain literary tradition. I was both writing in it and writing against it, especially the man-versus-nature narrative. I didn鈥檛 want to present myself as anyone other than who I was, which was very human鈥攏ot some kind of hero conquering the wild, but a woman boldly stepping into it and trying to find a home. I did not write Wild because I took a hike on the Pacific Crest Trail; I wrote Wild because I鈥檓 a writer. There鈥檚 a difference between those two things. I knew the point of Wild wasn鈥檛 going to be, Look at me, I鈥檓 so interesting, I took a hike. I knew that a lot of people had hiked a lot longer, a lot better, a lot more expertly. I wanted to find that universal human story that wasn鈥檛 just about me but about those bigger questions, about how journeys change us, how we bear what we think we cannot bear.鈥�

On 黑料吃瓜网s She鈥檚 Had Since the Book Was Published

鈥淢y two favorite things were always hiking and reading, and I still love both. I haven鈥檛 gone on a hike that long since 1995, but I鈥檝e taken extended trips with my kids. A few years ago, my son, my daughter, my husband, and I went to New Zealand and hiked the Milford Track and the Routeburn Track in Fiordland National Park. That country is just a dream for anyone who loves to hike or backpack. My kids left me and my husband in the dust. They鈥檙e so much fitter, so much faster. They were up there with the guide the whole time, leading the charge. It felt like a passing of the torch, to give my kids the love of hiking as well.鈥�

On What She鈥檇 Tell Her Daughter if She Wanted to Hike the PCT

鈥淚鈥檇 say, Go! Trust yourself. Trust your instincts. Believe in your ability to persevere through hard times, because there will be hard times. It will be beautiful. It will be fun. It will be glorious. And yes, it will also be miserable and awful and agonizing and tedious and boring and harder than you could ever imagine. And that鈥檚 the good news, because those are the things that teach us who we are, that show us our truest, deepest, strongest, bravest selves. And yes, I really want my daughter and my son to have that experience. I really want all of us to have that experience.鈥�

The post Cheryl Strayed on the 1995 Pacific Crest Trail Thru-Hike That Changed Everything appeared first on 黑料吃瓜网 Online.

The mountaineering memoir begins on Mount Everest. Silvia Vasquez-Lavado is far up on the Lhotse Face, en route to becoming the first Peruvian woman to summit the tallest peak on earth, and she can barely breathe. But she has persevered and made it higher than any of the macho male clients on her guided expedition. She counts her steps: 92, 93, 94鈥�.

So far, so鈥攚ell, so much like many other mountaineering memoirs. It鈥檚 a measure of this era of booming commercial climbing听(this year alone, more than 700 people summited Everest) that such a memoir would begin with a high-stakes moment near the top of the world. And it could fall into a familiar pattern. We have read the formula: The climbing is arduous. One slip might mean death. But somehow our heroine digs deep, finds that last bit of reserve, and reaches the peak.

鈥淚 focus on the ropes. Two skinny lines snaking up the icy face of Lhotse,鈥� writes Vasquez-Lavado. 鈥淚n my mind, they morph into velvet ropes leading us toward a mysterious, exclusive nightclub where both the dancers and the drinks are flowing. A blackout drunk experience is way less terrifying than this.鈥�

Waiiiiit a second. Maybe this isn鈥檛 the usual climbing memoir. Sure, the author fits the mold in some ways: she鈥檚 a successful tech executive鈥攁t eBay, PayPal, and Skyy Vodka鈥攚ho challenges herself by climbing high peaks. But she was also the first openly gay woman to climb the Seven Summits. And she spent much of her adult life, as she puts it, achieving the 鈥渕agical trifecta: alcoholic, workaholic, sexaholic.鈥�

Like Cheryl Strayed鈥檚 Wild,听In the Shadow of the Mountain is about much more than a climb. It鈥檚 about the mountains, of course. But it鈥檚 also a story about surviving abuse, moving through addiction, and coming to terms with the dark places听in our lives. (We chose it for the 黑料吃瓜网 Book Club鈥檚 May pick, and I recently discussed it with Vasquez-Lavado in a video Q and A, which you can watch below or by heading to听.)

Vasquez-Lavado鈥檚 abuse began at a very young age, at the hands of a trusted male housekeeper who she calls J, and it鈥檚 tough to read about. Little Silvia is in first or second grade. Her mother is out. 鈥淣o need to say anything,鈥� J tells her. 鈥淵our parents know what I鈥檓 doing and it鈥檚 okay. They鈥檝e asked me to.鈥�

I feel sick just typing those words.

Thus began years of sexual abuse, its ugliness set against a backdrop of the red poinciana trees and bustling streets of 1980s Lima, Peru. Her parents fight; J comes to her in the silence when no one else is home. Silvia has her first glass of pisco at age nine, and it sets her body on fire.

She cuts off her hair and starts listening to heavy metal. After she鈥檚 accepted to a tiny American college in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, she graduates, armed with a business degree and an H-1B visa, and gets a job at Skyy Vodka in San Francisco, where she dedicates herself in equal measures to work and some truly impressive drinking. When she discovers the city鈥檚 lesbian scene, she dives in. At one point, she decides she鈥檚 going to sleep with a hundred women. 鈥淚 was,鈥� she writes, 鈥渉unting oblivion.鈥�

She beautifully describes how听survivors of sexual abuse carry the things that were done to them: 鈥淟ike a tree growing around a gash in its trunk, first you split, then fuse back together, and eventually envelop the object, the rock, the wound, swallowing it into your belly as if it were your very own.鈥�

Vasquez-Lavado finally hits bottom, and this time her family helps. She returns to Peru for an ayahuasca ceremony鈥攚ith her parents!鈥攁nd has a vision that will change her life: she is safe in a range of high mountains, like the Andes of her ancestors, reunited with her childhood self. She decides to trek to Everest Base Camp and is so moved by its what she sees听that she vows to return as a mountaineer. When she does go back to climb the mountain, she walks to Base Camp with young women from the nonprofit she founded, , which helps victims of sexual abuse and trafficking, before climbing with the outfitter 黑料吃瓜网 Consultants.

Her account of her time on Everest is often hilarious. Base Camp is like 鈥渢he opening scene in M*A*S*H* but with yaks instead of jeeps.鈥� The crowd on the summit resembles 鈥渁 convention of astronauts.鈥� Her fellow clients are 鈥渃ast straight from a James Bond movie. A British millionaire? A rugby player? A seven-foot-tall Kiwi? Seal Team Six? My God. My God. What the hell have I done?鈥�

But her spirit carries her up, and, as she writes, her Andean roots 鈥渟tarted to show the higher into the mountains we went.鈥� One by one, the James Bond characters drop out. And it鈥檚 not a spoiler to say that Vasquez-Lavado earns her place at the top of the world. (Hollywood has already come calling鈥擵asquez-Lavado is working on a screenplay in a project produced by Selena Gomez, who will play her in the film adaptation of the book.)

So is this a mountaineering memoir? Yes and no. Turns out, the mountain Silvia Lavado-Vasquez climbed was a lot bigger than Everest. And because of that, In the Shadow of the Mountain is for anyone with similarly challenging inner journeys鈥攊n other words, all of us.

The post 鈥業n the Shadow of the Mountain鈥� Is Not Your Typical Everest Book appeared first on 黑料吃瓜网 Online.