Can inspirational quotes make you a champion? It worked for six-time Hawaii 鈥攁nd he wants to share his moral support with us mere mortals.

The legendary triathlete’s听new book,听, combines scenic photographs with Allen’s own spiritual thoughts. The finished product听reads in bit like a series of inspirational posters, but also as a serious reflection on healthy competition. 听

We talked to Allen about the book, triathlons, and the spiritual work he does with .

OUTSIDE: What made you decide to write a book of inspirational quotes?
ALLEN: For years, people asked me, ‘What did you think about during races? How did you hold it together?’ I always felt I was falling short of explaining the essence of what I was doing.

How did you begin to compile the quotes?
I was on a retreat with Brant Secunda in Japan. I was lying down and these quotes just started coming to me, out of thin air. It was like a faucet. By the next day, I鈥檇 written down 35 to 40 quotes. I thought, these are pretty cool, but I didn鈥檛 have a vision for what to with them. Five years later, I decided that I needed to pair them with photographs from nature.

Why is nature such an important part of the book?
We are hard wired to feel good in nature, and the quotes have everything to do with us feeling good in life. That is how I raced best; when I felt good about life. I trained in San Diego in the winter and Boulder in the summer and I just loved those environments. You鈥檙e running by the ocean and then riding in the foothills of the Rockies. It doesn鈥檛 get any better. Nature has always been a huge part of my training. When you go outside and immerse yourself in nature, you inherently feel better.

Did you write this book for triathletes?
I wrote this book for everybody. There鈥檚 not one photo of an athlete in it. There are no numbers or formulas. It鈥檚 meant to test people on a deeper level. Obviously, there鈥檚 a sport slant to a lot of it, but it applies to personal challenges in any arena.

Should someone read this book straight through? Or take their time with a few quotes at a time?
When I had put everything together for the book, I sent out a PDF to people to get feedback. One of the guys I sent it to I thought was as far at the end of the spectrum of people who might like it as possible. He finally called me, and told me he鈥檇 at last finished reading the book. He鈥檇 started reading quotes and flipping through the pages, and then realized he could only look at two or three quotes each day because he would start thinking about each one. I think a lot of people will read a little bit at a time and go reflect on it.

The book contains positive quotes, but it also addresses problems such as being stuck, jealous, or grappling with self-pity. Do you deal with all of those?
I鈥檝e had to overcome all of those things. I didn鈥檛 want to make the book just about fluffy positive things. I was feeling sorry for myself all those years I didn鈥檛 win races. I could be in the lead at hours five, six, or seven, but I couldn鈥檛 be in the lead at the finish line. I had jealousy and self-pity when Dave Scott kept winning and I couldn鈥檛. We all have to find a way to move beyond those things.

Your best known race is the 1989 Ironman Hawaii battle with Dave Scott. What did that win mean to you?
It was an amazing race because we were side by side for eight hours. It had never happened before, and it hasn鈥檛 happened since. It was a defining moment for me. I made the switch to finally having the race I wanted to have. It was the first time I really integrated the soul-body concept. I really embraced how the internal space dictates what is going on outside of you.

What happened mentally with you in that race that enabled you to push through to the finish line?
Dave was surging at the half marathon point. I remember looking around at the black lava surrounding us, and thinking that it was the most amazing creation nature could make. It was like a cloud had lifted. I stopped thinking about everything and became a vehicle for performance to take place. I think almost all great athletic performances happen when you are in that space.

What was the tougher race: The duel with Dave Scott or your final Ironman Hawaii victory in 1995, when you had to make up 13 and a half minutes in the marathon over race leader Thomas Hellriegel?
I would say the final victory was the hardest. When I was racing with Dave, we were side by side the whole time. There was zero doubt about how he was feeling. With Hellriegel, I was racing a guy who鈥檇 passed me on the bike and I didn鈥檛 see again for hours. It was very hard mentally to keep going and say this is something that could turn around.

How did you keep going when you were that far back?
I knew I had to make up 30 seconds per mile in the marathon. It seemed so impossible. I threw off my heart rate monitor. It would tell me if I was running out of gas, and I didn鈥檛 want to know that.

What made you a great triathlete?
Tons of guys have the same genetics as me. I鈥檓 not a freak of nature genetically. There are a lot of guys with better numbers. But the numbers in the logbook don鈥檛 necessarily tell what you will do in competition. I discovered how to persevere in difficult moments. When you just want to quit, you have to surrender to the moment, and find a calm.

What did you love about Ironman Hawaii?
I loved that Ironman is such a complex puzzle to figure out. The wind, the heat, the energy of the Big Island. Everyone willing to give 100 percent. I really loved that.

Have you been surprised by the enormous growth in the sport of Ironman?
When I started in 1982, there were 1,000 people in the race in Kona. You didn鈥檛 have to qualify. There were very few Ironman races to enter. Now, there are races everywhere. I think people do this sport because of the community of people, and because you test yourself and challenge yourself.

What do you do in the retreats you host with Shaman Brant Secunda?
We teach retreats all over the world. We鈥檝e been doing it since 1998. The Art of Competition is a teaser of what you can get if you develop your mind and body, which is what we work on at our retreats. We get a huge range of people at our retreats. Everyone from world class athletes to inactive, overweight individuals. The way we set up the workshops is so there鈥檚 something for everybody.

Do you also work with triathletes?
I do training camps periodically. I鈥檒l be in Boulder in August. I talk about both the physical and mental because there鈥檚 a lot of misinformation about training. I believe in getting fit in a way that is healthy instead of burning yourself out. I tell a lot of Ironman stories because it brings to life that even champions struggle.

Do you still do triathlons?
My day-to-day exercise now is surfing. I live in Santa Cruz and absolutely love it. I get out on the water most days. It鈥檚 my cardio, my strength, my stretching, and my nature fix. I also run and lift weights.

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“No man鈥檚 land” is a term that, to the modern ear, can sound like stepping onto a battlefield. In fact, the phrase refers back to the idea of unclaimed land (recorded as “听in the Domesday survey of England of 1086) and still carries an echo of perennial hopes for free land, for places beyond the control of others. Ordinary places become extraordinary in no man鈥檚 land.

Such in-between places remind us how dependent we are on borders鈥攖hat our sense of order and certainty draws deeply from the knowledge that we are in governed territory. No man鈥檚 lands may be vast stretches of unclaimed land or tiny scraps left over from the planning of cities, though the uncertainty of the no man鈥檚 land is especially keenly felt in places that the outside world refuses to recognize or that appear to be between borders.

The notion that places might slip down between borders led me on a geographical quest. I went looking for the farthest possible distance between the border posts of two contiguous nations, to see how far they could be stretched apart.

Most border posts face each other. A change of signage, a different flag, a line on the road, all combine to signal that no sooner have you stepped out of one country than you have arrived in another. But what happens if you keep on opening up that space?A few years ago, with the help of hours spent blinking at the tiny fonts favored on travelers鈥� Internet chat forums, I found what I was looking for. Along a road between in West Africa the distance between border posts is 27 kilometers.

It is not the world鈥檚 only attenuated border area. The Sani Pass, which runs up to the mountainous kingdom of Lesotho from South Africa, is the most famous. It鈥檚 a rough road, although much visited by tourists in 4x4s seeking out the highest pub in Africa, which sits near the top of the pass. The drama of the trip is heightened by the thrill that comes from learning that this is no man鈥檚 land. The South Africa border control, complete with “Welcome to South Africa” signs, is 5.6 kilometers away from the Lesotho border office.

Another specimen is to be found in the mountainous zone between border posts on the Torugart Pass that connects China and Kyrgyzstan. Central America also has a nice example in Paso Canoas, a town that can appear to be between Panama and Costa Rica. It is habitually described as no man鈥檚 land because, having left through one border post, you can go into the town without passing through immigration to enter the other country. Some visitors relish the impression that the town around them is beyond borders. Partly as a result, Paso Canoas has developed a darkly carnival atmosphere, as if it were some kind of escaped or twilight place.

What these gaps reflect back at us is our own desires, especially the wish to step outside, if only for a short time, the claustrophobic grid of nations. We probably already suspect that it鈥檚 an illusion. Shuffling forward in a queue and making it past the passport officer does not mean you are, at that exact moment, leaving or entering a country. Such points of control exist to verify that you are allowed to enter or leave. Their proximity to the borderline is a legal irrelevance.

Yet this legal interpretation fails to grasp either the symbolic importance of the border point or the pent-up urge to enter ungoverned territory.The fact that Paso Canoas is split by the Panama鈥� Costa Rica border rather than actually being between borders doesn鈥檛 stop people from describing it as an “escaped zone.”Similarly, the steep valley up the Sani Pass is nearly all in South Africa, and the road down from Senegal into Guinea is always in one nation or another, but that isn鈥檛 how travelers experience it or even what they want.

The attraction of these in-between spaces has a lot to do with the fact that they are on land. Going through passport control at an airport provides no comparable thrill, even though international airspace is far more like a genuine no man鈥檚 land than any number of dusty miles on the ground. It seems that escaping the nation-state isn鈥檛 all that is going on here. There is a primal attraction to entering somewhere real, a place that can be walked on, gotten lost in, even built on, and that appears to be utterly unclaimed.

Some of the overland tourist trips that occasionally rumble along the Senegal鈥揋uinea highway offer camping in the no man鈥檚 land as part of the package. Like other examples, it鈥檚 a zone that provokes people to muse on allegiance and belonging. In his essay , the American travel writer Matt Brown describes encounters with villagers along the Senegal鈥揋uinea road that provoke speculation on the nature of national identity:

I stopped my bike to chat with the woman pounding leaves. I asked in French (my Pular only goes so far), “Is this Guinea?” “Yes,” she answered. Surprised that she even understood French, I posed a follow-up question. “Is this Senegal?” I asked. “Yes,” came the reply.

A little later Brown sits on “a nationless rock”听and imagines these villagers as freed from the “archaic, nonsensical national borders drawn up by greedy European leaders at the Conference of Berlin over 100 years ago.” Stretching out border posts does seem to break the seal on the national unit. The resultant gap may not be of much legal import, but for travelers on the ground it creates a sense of openness and possibility.

Yet while travelers may relish this expansiveness, the consequences for those who have to live and work in such places can be less positive, such as heightened insecurity and a sense of abandonment. This is one of the reasons why African states have been trying to close the gap in such anomalous spaces. The , which supports economic infrastructure projects across the continent, has made “establishing juxtaposed checkpoints at the borders” of its member states a priority, including at the Guinea鈥揝enegal border.

What most concerns the fund鈥檚 members is the impact that these distant border posts have on the flow of trade. Along the Guinea鈥揝enegal route there are nightmare tales of vehicles being sent back and forth by officials who keep asking for new documentation or demanding new bribes. In-between land can easily turn into a place of bureaucratic limbo where both travelers and locals are uniquely vulnerable to tiresome and corrupt officialdom. Patches of ground “between” nations are places that can be thought of as free, but they are also places where we are reminded why people willingly give up freedoms for the order and security of being behind a border.听

Excerpt from Unruly Places: Lost Spaces, Secret Cities, and Other Inscrutable Geographies. Copyright 漏 2014 by Alastair Bonnett. Used by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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Don鈥檛 waste time on trashy novels at the beach this summer. These new outdoor and adventure page turners prove yet again that true stories trump fiction for fun reads.听

Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller鈥檚 Tragic Quest for Primitive Art

By Carl Hoffman (William Morrow)

The art-collecting son of billionaire Nelson Rockefeller disappeared in 1961 in the waters off the coast of New Guinea when his dugout canoe overturned. He was declared dead by drowning even though his body was never recovered. But whispers arose that he survived and was ritually cannibalized by locals. Hoffman, , searches to find the answer.听

Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes across America

By John Waters (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)

There鈥檚 almost no new ground can cover鈥攅xcept, of course, if it鈥檚 penned by the thin-moustached, ingeniously funny nutbtall writer and director who gave the world the cult classic movies Pink Flamingos and Hairspray. The book is divided into three sections: Best case scenarios (on what he imagines could happen on the trip), worst case scenarios (ditto), and what really happens (the nonfiction storytelling part). Each one is equally rewarding, funny, and surprising.

Gone Feral: Tracking My Dad through the Wild

By Novella Carpenter

Writer Novella Carpenter is on the verge of starting her own family when she鈥檚 contacted that her survivalist father, in his 70s, has disappeared from his cabin in a remote corner of Idaho. She finds him but continues searching for a connection to him鈥攕omething she鈥檚 never really had, by investigating her own past, and he has left for her.

The Explorers: A Story of Fearless Outcasts, Blundering Geniuses, and Impossible Success

By Martin Dugard (Simon and Schuster)

In the mid 19th Century, bombastic Richard Francis Burton and bookish John Hanning Speke emerged from their renowned expedition in search of the source of the Nile River with differing conclusions. Their ensuing feud would create an international sensation, overshadowing the courage and perseverance they showed in overcoming the remarkable adversity that confronted their perilous journey. Dugard, who co-wrote 鈥淜illing Lincoln鈥� with Fox News celebrity Bill O鈥橰eilly, uses the story as a Malcom Gladwell-like vehicle to present to be successful.

Denali鈥檚 Howl: The Deadliest Climbing Disaster on America鈥檚 Wildest Peak

By Andy Hall (Dutton)

Seven members of a 12-man mountaineering team died on Mount McKinley in 1967 after being hammered by an epic, weeklong storm. Their remains are buried beneath the Alaskan snow to this day. Few people were closer to the tragedy as it unfolded than Andy Hall, the five-year-old son of the park superintendent at the time. Almost a half-century later, Hall investigates and sheds new light on the events that led up to, and unfolded after, .

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IT’S HARD TO THINK of three more influential masters of holistic environmentalism than Michael Pollan, William McDonough, and Michael Braungart. Their classic books (Pollan) and (McDonough and Braungart) changed the way we think about food and consumer products鈥攁nd did it by inviting readers to consider greater possibilities instead of browbeating them into limitations. This month finds all three offering long-awaited follow-ups.

In Cradle to Cradle, McDonough and Braungart鈥攁n architect and a chemist, respectively鈥攊ntroduced a manufacturing paradigm of continuous product reuse. No more planned obsolescence! Shutter the landfills! The ideas were ambitious, but some did find their way into the real world鈥攅very U.S. Postal Service Express and Priority Mail envelope is now cradle-to-cradle certified.

In (North Point Press, $28), the pair propose another shift: moving from harm reduction to benefit creation. Where most see pollution, the authors see design opportunities. Why not recover valuable phosphate from human waste? 鈥淪top thinking sewage,鈥� they write, 鈥渁nd start thinking nutrient management.鈥� Turbines too ugly? Use Amtrak鈥檚 14,000 miles of rail easements, the authors suggest, as solar-power corridors. 鲍辫肠测肠濒别鈥�s prose is like a long TED Talk studded with corporate keynote-isms, but the authors have a knack for combining big ideas with commonsense practicality, which leaves readers feeling excited about the future.

In (Penguin Press, $28), Pollan is aiming to spark another revolution. When asked what an ordinary person can do to reform the overindustrialized, calorie-stuffed American food system, Pollan gives a one-word answer: cook. That means a return to scratch home cooking, a pleasurable, ordinary act that we鈥檝e outsourced to corporations in the name of convenience and cost savings. We live in an age of the 鈥渃ooking paradox,鈥� Pollan writes: the less we do it, the fatter we get. Pollan revives the lost art by learning how to do it well, working his way through four elements: fire (barbecuing with a pit master), water (pot cooking), air (baking), and soil (fermenting with the microbes of the earth).

As in The Omnivore鈥檚 Dilemma, Pollan is never less than delightful, full of curiosity, insight, and good humor. This is a book to be read, savored, and smudged with spatterings of olive oil, wine, butter, and the sulfuric streaks of chopped onion.

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Hey, we鈥檙e with you. Given half a chance, we鈥檇 much rather hit the road than the armchair. Nothing can replace the intensity of authentic experience. Yet experience needs shape and wisdom and behind every great adventure are the stories that inspired it. We read before we go; and after we arrive, free and clear in far-flung terrain and edgy places, we invariably find echoes of the voices that led us there.

The following list is devoted to books that offer the truest inspiration, the deepest reflection, the strongest provocation. These are books that seize imaginations and rattle sedentary lives

Longtime readers will note that this is our second venture in literary list-making. The first 国产吃瓜黑料 Canon, which appeared in May 1996, spanned many centuries, from Gilgamesh to Al Gore, and encompassed a host of genres, including fiction, sports, environmental manifestos, natural history, poetry, and how-to books. This time around, we were determined to drill to the core. To compile the distilled contents of a tool kit for adventure literacy. The writing, we decided, must be urgent and contemporary in spirit, so we narrowed our sights to the past 100 years or so. No fiction. No collections and no geopolitical reportage. (Otherwise, how could we pass up Cahill and Kapuscinski?) Nothing classic for the sake of self-importance we wanted two-fisted, readable works defined by an insatiable appetite for the world at its wildest. Books that do what the indomitable boxer Joe Frazier had in mind when he said, “I don't want to knock my opponent out. I want to hit him, step away, and watch him hurt. I want his heart.鈥�

These books stole ours.

25. 鈥極ld Glory鈥� by听Jonathan Raban听(1981)

There are grander adventures than Raban's on this list, but few as eloquent. 鈥淚 found that I had landed up in a tree slum,鈥澨� in a 16-foot aluminum boat down the Mississippi, “where overcrowding and miscegenation had made it almost impossible to make out the individuals in the tangled mass. … They didn鈥檛 seem to be aware of the opportunities for trees in North America.鈥澨齌hough Raban鈥檚 wit is always intact, we do sometimes question his fortitude. (What鈥檚 up with his mortal fear of birds?) But we鈥檙e suckers for his Brit鈥檚-eye view of America and for his Huck鈥檚-eye view of the Big Muddy: 鈥淚 drifted downstream, just letting the river unroll around me. … The charts and tree book seemed hopelessly thin and theoretical when set against the here-and-now of the Mississippi itself. The river was simply too big, too promiscuous … it would never tamely submit to posing for its portrait.鈥�

24. 鈥楢 Walk in The Woods鈥� by听Bill Bryson听(1998)

Hands down, you鈥檒l ever read on long-distance thru-hiking. In his lazy, TV-addled pal Stephen Katz, Bryson couldn鈥檛 have picked a less prepared partner for an attempt on the Appalachian Trail nor a better comic foil. 鈥淔or two days, Katz barely spoke to me. On the second night, at nine o鈥檆lock, an unlikely noise came from his tent the punctured-air click of a beverage can being opened and he said in a pugnacious tone, 鈥楧o you know what that was, Bryson? Cream soda. You know what else? I鈥檓 drinking it right now. And I鈥檓 not giving you any. And you know what else? It鈥檚 delicious.鈥欌��

23. TIE: 鈥楢live鈥� by听Piers Paul Read (1974); 鈥楾he Perfect Storm鈥� by听Sebastian Junger (1997)

Yeah, so we cheated. Try as we might, we couldn鈥檛 break the tie between these two blockbusters of disaster. Fact is, they鈥檝e both outlasted their initial sensational appeal and one reason, we suspect, is that they鈥檙e stories of people confronted with great danger they did not seek. subjects members of a Uruguayan rugby team whose Fairchild F-227 crashed in the Andes in October 1972 had no intention of conducting a ten-week, cannibalistic survival course above timberline. Especially grisly aside from, yes, the consumption of 鈥渞aw meat鈥澨齣s the avalanche that buried the survivors on their 17th day stranded.听Read gives a paragraph or more to each man, and you may have to remind yourself to inhale: 鈥淧edro Algorta, still buried beneath the snow, had only what air he held in his lungs. He felt himself near to death, yet the knowledge that after his death his body would help the others to survive instilled in him a kind of ecstasy. It was as if he were already at the portals of heaven.鈥�

were out trying to make a living when a 鈥渙nce in a century鈥澨齨or鈥檈aster hit in October 1991, and their hard luck deepens this account of their loss. Perilous work is Junger鈥檚 grand theme, and his abiding respect for it enables him to go beyond the events at hand, whether deciphering complicated meteorology or reporting the angry sorrow of wives and brothers seeking justice that isn't coming. In the paperback, eager to get it right, Junger cleared up controversies surrounding his facts, but he鈥檇 already taken what could have been a maudlin story and banged it into a thriller.

22. 鈥楳y Journey to Lhasa鈥� by听Alexandra David-Neel (1927)

Frankly, she鈥檚 not in the demographic. She鈥檚 54. She's stout. She鈥檚 a former opera singer, for crying out loud. Who cares? A scholar of Eastern religion and Tibetan language, David-Neel was indisputably a fearless traveler, a rogue鈥檚 rogue who, in 1923, disguised as an illiterate pilgrim, became the first Western woman to reach Tibet鈥檚 forbidden city.

Mind you, doesn鈥檛 reinvent the form. David-Neel sets down what happened in the order it happened, and her attention to detail is almost anal. She even has the requisite adventure sidekick, a young Sikkimese monk. An unlikely pair, they鈥檙e stuck together in an escapade that involves everything from fooling the locals with their disguises to crossing 19,000-foot passes at night. 鈥淲as the lama far behind?鈥澨齭he writes. 鈥淚 turned to look at him. Far, far below, amidst the white silent immensity, a small black spot, like a tiny Lilliputian insect, seemed to be crawling slowly up. … An inexpressible feeling of compassion moved me to the bottom of my heart. … I would find the pass; it was my duty.鈥�

David-Neel鈥檚 prose is of its time, in the best and worst ways, but her account has the power to awe even today.

21. 鈥楰on-Tiki鈥� by听Thor Heyerdahl (1950)

鈥淛ust occasionally you find yourself in an odd situation. You get into it by degrees and in the most natural way but, when you are right in the midst of it, you are suddenly astonished and ask yourself how in the world it all came about.鈥�

, the very prototype of the seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time fool鈥檚 errand. Heyerdahl, of course, set out on a balsa raft in 1947 to prove that the South Pacific could have been peopled by natives of Peru. Along with five equally loco Norwegians and a parrot, he survives on fish that literally hurl themselves on deck, meets up with a few sharks, and endures a beaching in Tahiti. Though the trip proved inconclusive (to say the least), it created such a sensation that lecture halls around the world sold out for debates on Polynesian history. Heyerdahl鈥檚 antics can have a hand-me-down quality, something vaguely remembered from seventh-grade social studies, but just because everyone鈥檚 supposed to read him doesn鈥檛 mean he鈥檚 not great company. Heyerdahl鈥檚 happily aware that his is an absurd cosmic prank, but it鈥檚 still one heck of a story of men and the sea.

20. 鈥楪reat Plains鈥� by听Ian Frazier听(1989)

Talk about a road trip: Frazier begins with an ode reminiscent of Whitman. 鈥淎way to the great plains of America, to that immense western short-grass now mostly plowed under!鈥澨齛nd ends with 65 wonderful pages of notes on everything from Dodge City鈥檚 other nicknames (Bibulous Babylon of the Frontier) to how Native Americans used their bodies as alarm clocks by drinking lots of water before going to bed. In between, he cruises from the Black Hills to Turkey, Texas, holding forth with visionary zeal: 鈥淧ersonally, I love Crazy Horse,鈥澨齢e writes, 鈥渂ecause, like the rings of Saturn, the carbon atom, and the underwater reef, he belonged to a category of phenomena which our technology had not then advanced far enough to photograph.鈥澨齋ure, we fought over whether Frazier packed enough red-blooded adventure into this book to make the cut. He gets around mostly by car, so we might just as easily have tapped Steinbeck鈥檚 Travels with Charley, or Least Heat-Moon鈥檚 Blue Highways, or gone straight for the source of our adolescent wanderlust with On the Road. Well, we could have, and we didn鈥檛. Not because we don鈥檛 love those other asphalt serenades, but because Great Plains both delivers a song of the open road and defibrillates the heartland like no book we know.

19. 鈥榊oung Men and Fire鈥� by听Norman Maclean听(1992)

Maclean may be best known for the novella and short stories collected in A River Runs Through It, but the nonfiction , an unfinished work written in his 鈥渁ntishuffleboard鈥澨齳ears and published two years after his death, has every bit the passionate following River did before Redford brought it to the screen. In many ways, this is the original smoke-jumper story, reopening the file on one of the worst firefighting disasters in history, the Mann Gulch Fire of 1949. Some of the earliest jumpers chuted in and set to work on the massive Montana blaze not far from Maclean鈥檚 cabin; two hours later, 12 of the 15 had been burned 鈥渓ike squirrels.鈥澨鼴y turns intensely beautiful, rarely is something so dangerous rendered so lyrically and exquisitely erudite on the physics of fire. Maclean鈥檚 affecting book is full of taut passages that jack your pulse rate as the men try to outpace the runaway blaze. 鈥淭he grass and brush of Mann Gulch could not be faster than it was now,鈥澨齅aclean writes, as the smoke jumpers realize they are hemmed in by a ridge. 鈥淚t could run so fast you couldn鈥檛 escape it and it could be so hot it could burn out your lungs before it caught you.鈥�

18. Running the Amazon,听Joe Kane听(1989)

As 听opens, our man Kane is something of an 国产吃瓜黑料 Everyman. He鈥檚 been editing a newsletter for the Rainforest Action Network; he arrives in the Andes toting a copy of The Portable Conrad; he's joking about being shot at by the Shining Path. (Soon enough this won鈥檛 be a joke.) He鈥檚 also the only American among nine men and one woman attempting the first descent of the Amazon. Not a splashy writer so much as a sharp one, Kane starts slowly but soon has you gulping down chapters the way the team knocks back pisco: 鈥淎t the beginning at least, whitewater adrenaline comes cheap. It鈥檚 the river doing the work, of course, but like a teenager with a hot car, one forgets what the true power source is. Arrogance reigns. … You think: Let鈥檚 get on with it.鈥澨鼳nd Kane does, observing how arrogance gets chastened to humility听and noting each snag of dysfunction in a team of which only four go the distance. It鈥檚 that combination of interpersonal struggle and poignant scenes of life on the river that elevates Running the Amazon above the deluge of first-descent books. That and the fact that he had 4,200 miles of material to work with.

17. 鈥楾he Long Way鈥� by听Bernard Moitessier听(1971)

鈥淲hen you have long skirted vast expanses stretching to the stars, beyond the stars, you come back with different eyes.鈥澨�, contemplating his return to dry land after ten months on the open ocean. We love this book because of its sheer boldness: At the head of the pack in the 1968 Golden Globe, the first round-the-world solo yacht race, the author passes up the chance to claim victory and just keeps going. Moitessier ultimately puts ashore in Tahiti, having slingshotted a farewell note aboard a passing ship and jettisoned his clothes and many cases of good red wine along the way. At sea the Frenchman is a holy fool, disillusioned by society and reluctant to let go of the ineffable feeling of well-being he gains at sea. There are any number of supposedly more gripping, can鈥檛-put-it-down seafaring stories (see the sad tale of his fellow racer Donald Crowhurst on page 65), but we challenge you to find one more appealing than Moitessier鈥檚 thoughtful and high-spirited log. And that goes for the man who inspired him, Joshua Slocum, number seven on this list. It鈥檚 no coincidence that Moitessier named his 40-foot steel ketch Joshua.

16. 鈥楾racks鈥� by听Robyn Davidson听(1980)

You read and think: I鈥檝e had friends like you. Friends who fun tends to metastasize around. Friends you facetiously hate, because they blow into town and stage weekends it takes weeks to recover from. No question, she鈥檚 plumb crazy 鈥済one tropical鈥澨齛s she puts it but crazy in the best sense of the word. At 27, the young Australian arrived in Alice Springs with six dollars, trained two wild camels (you try it), and set off for the Indian Ocean with the semiferal dromedaries, two tame ones, and her dog. But behind the madcap drama of the 鈥渃amel lady,鈥澨齛s Davidson became known, are a young woman's complicated emotions about the end of adventure and the arrival of fame. Reaching the ocean after 1,700 miles, she 鈥渞ode down that stunningly, gloriously fantastic pleistocene coastline with the fat sun bulging on to a flat horizon and all I could muster was a sense of it all having finished too abruptly, so that I couldn't get tabs on the fact that it was over.鈥澨齁ust weeks later she鈥檇 be feted in New York, realizing that she 鈥渨as forgetting that what鈥檚 true in one place is not necessarily true in another. If you walk down Fifth Avenue smelling of camel shit and talking to yourself you get avoided like the plague.鈥澨鼶avidson is the world鈥檚 most reluctant darling but walking wild, ragged, and alone, she blew the dust off the tired, musty feet of white-male adventure.

15. 鈥楢 Short Walk in the Hindu Kush鈥� by听Eric Newby (1958)

鈥淣ewby to Friend: I鈥檓 bored. Let鈥檚 drive to Afghanistan and climb some previously unvisited peaks in the Hindu Kush.

Friend to Newby: Good idea, but we don鈥檛 know how to climb mountains.

Newby to Friend: Not a problem. We鈥檒l go to Wales for the weekend and learn how.鈥�

That鈥檚 how Tony Wheeler, the founder of Lonely Planet and the proud U.S. publisher of , summarizes this droll classic, the original buddy flick of Extreme Lit. Without Newby, there might never have been a Bryson, an O鈥橦anlon, or a Cahill. He鈥檚 the backpacker without a cause, the sort who gives himself over to the journey a quite ambitious trek through Afghanistan鈥檚 rugged Nuristan region certain that only by blundering forward can the purpose of the excursion be revealed. Newby reminds us that even a valid passport is inessential to traveling. All you really need is to be game.

14. 鈥楢rctic Dreams鈥� by听Barry Lopez (1986)

Thanks to fellow badass Edward Hoagland鈥檚 glowing New York Times review, critics couldn鈥檛 seem to refer to without the word 鈥渏ubilant,鈥澨齱hich, from a certain perspective, is curious. After all, close encounters with polar bears, killer whales, and walruses, while thrilling, aren鈥檛 necessarily joyful, and tend to make the author, by his own confession, rather anxious.

鈥淚t is not all benign and ethereal at the ice edge,鈥澨齃opez writes. 鈥淵ou cannot I cannot lose completely the sense of how far from land this is. I am wary of walrus. … A friend of mine was once standing with an Eskimo friend at an ice edge when the man cautioned him to step back. They retreated 15 to 20 feet. Less than a minute later, the walrus surfaced in an explosion of water where they had been standing.鈥�

Lopez may feel inexperienced, but it鈥檚 hard to imagine a better interpreter of the far north. His descriptions of the Arctic Ocean shine: 鈥淎 geometry of lightning-bolt-shaped leads, of long black ponds, jagged rills, and ridges of debris that meander like eskers stretches as far as light and the atmosphere let you see.鈥澨鼳nd come to think of it, though Arctic Dreams involves a great deal of solitude and icebergs and cold, jubilant is the word. Lopez leaves us amazed by the natural world, respectful of our place in it, and elated at its dazzling variety.

13. 鈥業n Patagonia鈥� by听Bruce Chatwin (1977)

We know what you鈥檙e thinking: Idiots, it鈥檚 fiction! But the claims that Chatwin lied to fashion the episodes and characters that make up this exquisite little book turn out to be greater exaggerations than Chatwin鈥檚 own. Sure, he got things out of order, mangled some Spanish, and dished up a few now classic Chatwinian embellishments (Se-ora Eberhard鈥檚 run-of-the-mill steel chair becoming a Mies van der Rohe, for one). But is at heart a personal quest to find the origins of boyhood fascination, 鈥渁 piece of brontosaurus鈥澨齭upposedly recovered from a thawed glacier in Punta Arenas by Chatwin鈥檚 seafaring cousin. At first Chatwin鈥檚 prose seems uniform like Hemingway, only boring. But his subtle sentences sneak up on you, and their economy allows him to surprise, leaving an indelible impression. Take Walter Rauff, exiled Nazi and inventor of the lethal Mobile Gas Truck: 鈥淭here is a man in Punta Arenas, dreams pine forests, hums Lieder, wakes each morning and sees the black strait. He drives to a factory that smells of sea. All about him are scarlet crabs, crawling, then steaming. He hears the shells crack and the claws breaking, sees the sweet white flesh packed firm in metal cans. … Does he remember that other smell, of burning?鈥澨鼵hatwin鈥檚 haunting images stay with you, reminding you that this is one messed-up, astonishing world.

12. 鈥楾he Mountains of My Life鈥� by听Walter Bonatti (2001)

finally published in the United States just two years ago take pride of place here over a number of towering works on mountaineering because (a) Bonatti was a god, a poetic soloist whose career included a controversial role in the first ascent of K2, and (b) he proves he can write as gracefully about a sunrise over the Alps as about an epic first ascent: 鈥淭he horizon showed up sharply, enchanted peaks plucked clean by the claws of a freezing and frenzied wind,鈥澨鼴onatti says of his 1962 ascent of the Alps鈥櫶齈ilier d鈥橝ngle. 鈥淲hen I looked out I saw the most beautiful spectacle one can encounter at dawn on the peak of Mont Blanc: on the one hand the Italian flank flooded with warm and blazing light, on the other the Savoie still immersed in night.鈥�

Take nothing away from Gaston Rebuffat鈥檚 1954 Starlight and Storm, the Frenchman鈥檚 spare and lovely tract that made the case for climbing as a communion with, rather than siege upon, mountains. And we know as well as anyone that Maurice Herzog鈥檚 canonical 1953 Annapurna was the Into Thin Air of its day, inspiring Ed Viesturs and countless other next-generation alpinists to take up climbing. But in returning to Annapurna we found we鈥檇 rather skip Herzog鈥檚 press-release nationalism and hang out with Bonatti.

11.听鈥楾ouching the Void鈥� by听Joe Simpson (1988)

As mountaineering survival stories go, this is the destroyer of its class: an incredible climbing epic in the hands of a pitch-perfect writer. starts out as a journal about the solace (and menace) of going high and remote (Peru鈥檚 21,000-foot Siula Grande) but soon becomes something else entirely. On the descent from the 21,000-foot summit, the author, suffering from a broken leg and damaged ribs from a previous accident, falls into a crevasse. His partner, Simon Yates, presuming him a goner and unable to keep Simpson鈥檚 dead weight from pulling him off the mountain, does the unthinkable: he cuts the rope. Alone in a canyon of ice, Simpson veers from stubborn determination to screaming anger and despair: 鈥淭here was no one to hear,鈥澨齢e writes, 鈥渂ut the looming empty chamber behind me made me feel inhibited, as if it were some disapproving silent witness to my weakness.鈥�

The book鈥檚 device of interspersing the devastated Yates鈥檚 thoughts in italics makes for amazing reading, and the pair鈥檚 reconciliation three days later at base camp, after Simpson has dragged himself down the scree, is a scene and theme that rises far above the mountaineering genre. Present the ethics of this book to someone who's never climbed a mountain and you could still end up talking about it all night.

10. 鈥楢rabian Sands鈥� by听Wilfred Thesiger (1959)

The last great British explorer? Eric Newby, for one, might jokingly beg to differ, but that鈥檚 because Thesiger called him a pansy when they met in the Hindu Kush. Sir Wilfred, the now 92-year-old troubadour who explored Arabia鈥檚 Empty Quarter before the oil fields tamed Bedouin culture, valiantly resists the lame camel jokes made by so many of his contemporary countrymen and, in contrast to many of today鈥檚 travel diarists, rarely makes himself the subject of his own stories. Thesiger鈥檚 love of the desert is never easy, always hard-won. 鈥淚 climbed a slope above our camp and bin Kabina joined me. I was hungry; I had only half my portion of the ash-encrusted bread the night before. The brackish water which I had drunk at sunset had done little to lessen my nagging thirst. Yet the sky seemed bluer than it had been for days. The sand was a glowing carpet set about my feet.鈥澨鼺or us, the question was merely, Which Thesiger? Yes, Marsh Arabs may be, as some critics claim, the better book, but is electric. And sure, we love those pithy quotes from T. E. Lawrence鈥檚 The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, but we鈥檙e in no mood for that bombast cover to cover. Stick with Thesiger: he鈥檒l make you wish you were born 50 years earlier and could make the trips he did with him.

9. 鈥楥oming into the Country鈥� by听John McPhee (1976)

Like Thesiger, there鈥檚 no question that McPhee belongs on this list the struggle comes in choosing which book. We were charmed by the slightly obscure Survival of the Bark Canoe. And certainly we heard from those who agitated for Encounters with the Archdruid, about environmental guru David Brower. But in the end our vote went to . Drawing on a marathon canoe trip down Alaska鈥檚 Salmon River and a season in a cabin on the Yukon River, McPhee knits together a passion for the backcountry, an unsentimental yet stirring view of Alaska鈥檚 Native tribes, and a hard look at the many misguided attempts to manage the Last Frontier鈥檚 natural resources (with a brilliant recap of the pipeline saga). McPhee pretty much tackles all the big questions here: 鈥淭o a palate without bias鈥攖he palate of an open-minded Berber, the palate of a traveling Martian鈥攚hich would be the more acceptable, a pink-icinged Pop-Tart with raspberry filling (cold) or the fat gob from behind a caribou鈥檚 eye?鈥�

Really, no one has done a better job of combining ride-along backcountry hijinks and lucid parsing of enviro policy than McPhee does here. Four hundred thirty-eight pages, and nothing less than the fate of Western civ, on a canoe trip.

8. 鈥業nto the Wild鈥� by听Jon Krakauer (1996)

Is Into Thin Air the more influential book? Absolutely. Is it the more thrilling? Arguably. However, not only is Into the Wild more arrestingly written and reported than its more famous cousin, it also stands up better to rereading. And whereas Into Thin Air delivers a stinging indictment of what鈥檚 wrong with modern mountaineering including ill-prepared individuals trying to 鈥渂uy鈥澨齮he world鈥檚 summits,听, which follows the final days and nights of a young idealist named Chris McCandless, speaks to anyone who has ever yearned for something pure, to be free of the affluenza of American life, to be self-reliant.

Like Into Thin Air, Into the Wild began as an article in 国产吃瓜黑料. But the book combined that investigation with material from new sources, people McCandless had met en route to Alaska who were brought out of the woodwork by the article. One of those whom McCandless touched most profoundly was Ronald Franz (not his real name), an 80-year-old so taken with the young man that he waited at McCandless鈥檚 campsite in the desert near the Salton Sea for his return.

From the accounts of people like Franz to close readings of McCandless鈥檚 underlined copies of Doctor Zhivago and Walden (鈥淣o man ever followed his genius till it misled him鈥�), Krakauer not only gets why McCandless retreated to the bush, but makes use of his own backcountry experience to empathize with him. Some readers have suggested that Krakauer is too easy on the kid and that McCandless ought to be viewed as suicidal, manipulative, or ridiculous, but Krakauer keeps it all an open question. Into the Wild reminds us that the very qualities of being in the wilderness that thrill and restore us or lead us, as Roderick Nash wrote, to 鈥渆ither melancholy or exultation鈥澨齝an swiftly take our lives.

7. 鈥楽ailing Alone Around the World鈥� by听Captain Joshua Slocum (1900)

A century later, Slocum鈥檚 account of the first-ever solo circumnavigation of the earth, and then some, on his 37-foot sloop, Spray, remains the title by which all other sailing books are judged not only because of its derring-do听but because it鈥檚 completely winning. 鈥淭he day was perfect, the sunlight clear and strong,鈥澨齋locum writes. 鈥淓very particle of water thrown into the air became a gem, and the Spray, making good her name as she dashed ahead, snatched necklace after necklace from the sea, and as often threw them away.鈥澨鼺ew contemporary sailing accounts come close to matching Slocum鈥檚 logs, not least for the captain鈥檚 sly wit: 鈥淪ome hailed me to know where away and why alone. Why? … The shore was dangerous!鈥澨齌his coming from a man who'd previously suppressed a mutiny and survived an ocean storm in a canoe. only improves with age, because reading it is like being present at the creation of the modern explorer-adventurer. Thoreau may have convinced us to return to the wild; Slocum revealed how that journey could be a feat of endurance, and a lighthearted spectacle to boot. If only the multitudes who followed his example did so on the page. Slocum never sells you on his story; he just tells it.

6. 鈥楨ndurance鈥� by听F. A. Worsley (1931)

First off, he was there. Sure, Alfred Lansing鈥檚 1959 has stood the test of time as a journalist鈥檚 chronicle, and Caroline Alexander broke new ground four years ago with her own The听Endurance鈥檚 comprehensive retelling of Sir Ernest Shackleton鈥檚 epic survival story. But as captain of the real HMS Endurance and navigator of the lifeboats he and Shackleton used to effect a rescue across the Southern Ocean, Worsley proved himself not only one of the finest small-craft sailors of the 20th century, but also a less official, more anecdotal, and听ultimately听more electrifying diarist than Sir Ernest himself.

By now听most people know this story down to the last dog and cat, but the immediacy of Worsley鈥檚 account revitalizes it. If you don鈥檛 feel his sorrow in losing his ship to the ice pack, share his delirium glissading down to the South Georgia whaling station that would be their salvation (a scene to which Shackleton, ever careful not to seem whimsical, gives only a cursory line in South), or tear up when the two men return to their friends on Elephant Island 128 days after they set out, you don鈥檛 love adventure.

5. 鈥楧esert Solitaire鈥� by听Edward Abbey (1968)

Obviously.

Four decades and change later, Cactus Ed is still Iggy Pop in a stale world of environmental classic rock. So punk that it transcends the natural history genre, of two seasons spent as a ranger in Arches National Park is about soul-searching, but without an ounce of New Age squish. 鈥淚 dream of a hard and brutal mysticism in which the naked self merges with a non-human world and yet somehow survives still intact, individual, separate. Paradox and bedrock.鈥澨鼳rgue with that.

4.听鈥楾he Snow Leopard鈥� by听Peter Matthiessen (1978)

Simply put,听 gets to the heart of why we go to the mountains. There are many other fine books on the subject John Muir鈥檚 My First Summer in the Sierra comes to mind but none succeed, as Matthiessen鈥檚 does, on so many levels.

One could say, for example, that it鈥檚 a book about sheep. After all, it delivers a funny, anecdotal account of American zoologist George Schaller鈥檚 field research on the Himalayan blue sheep, or bharal. (鈥淥h, there鈥檚 a penis-lick!鈥澨鼼.S. cries out, observing the rut. 鈥淎 beauty.鈥�) Then there鈥檚 the mythic cat of the title, which had been glimpsed by only two Westerners when Matthiessen and Schaller set out to track it in 1973. And the place the mysterious Land of Dolpo, a last enclave of Tibetan culture. And finally, without ever becoming a book about recovery, The Snow Leopard charts how the author came back to life after a great loss his wife, Deborah, had died of cancer the year before he left for the Himalayas. 鈥淲hy is death so much on my mind when I do not feel I am afraid of it?鈥澨齅atthiessen asks听while walking a sheer Himalayan ridge. 鈥淏etween clinging and letting go, I feel a terrific struggle. This is a fine chance to let go, to 鈥榳in my life by losing it.鈥欌��

3. 鈥榃est with the Night鈥� by听Beryl Markham (1942)

Sure, Markham starts a touch self-consciously, wondering aloud where, in the blur of her career as a pilot in Kenya during the 1930s, she ought to begin this tour de force memoir. But if you haven鈥檛 forgiven her this slightly contrived opening in three or four pages, we鈥檇 be surprised. The essence of a fascinating party guest, Markham is not only charming听but full of real adventures to tell from being mauled by a lion at age seven and nearly trampled by an elephant as an adult to bringing game hunters into (and, happily, back out of) the wild. Equally adept at telling a nail-biter as she is at waxing poetic about an African horizon or making you sorry her dog got gored by a warthog, you discover early and often why Hemingway gushed that she made him feel inadequate as a writer. 鈥淭he only disadvantage in surviving a dangerous encounter,鈥澨齭he observes, 鈥渓ies in the fact that your story of it tends to be anticlimactic. You can never carry on right through the point where whatever it is that threatens your life actually takes it and get anybody to believe you. The world is full of skeptics.鈥澨齅arkham is one of the few authors you are nearly always grateful to have as the hero of her own stories. , but be prepared to fall in love with a ghost.

2. 鈥楾he Worst Journey in the World鈥� by听Apsley Cherry-Garrard (1922)

So many superlatives have been heaped on this sick pup that it鈥檚 hard not to feel a little jaded before you read it for yourself. Don鈥檛 let the hype or, for that matter, the dozens of other books on Robert Falcon Scott鈥檚 doomed 1911 South Pole expedition scare you off. Livelier than Scott鈥檚 own writings (collected in Scott鈥檚 Last Expedition) and more immediate than Roland Huntford鈥檚 modern classic The Last Place on Earth, of this infamous sufferfest is a chilling testimonial to what happens when things really go south. Many have proven better at negotiating such epic treks than Scott, Cherry, and his crew, but none have written about it more honestly and compassionately than Cherry. 鈥淭he horrors of that return journey are blurred to my memory and I know they were blurred to my body at the time. I think this applies to all of us, for we were much weakened and callous. The day we got down to the penguins I had not cared whether I fell into a crevasse or not.鈥�

1. 鈥榃ind, Sand, and Stars鈥� by听Antoine de Saint-Exup茅ry (1939)

Like his most famous creation, The Little Prince, that visitor from Asteroid B-612 who once saw 44 sunsets in a single day, Saint-Exup茅ry disappeared into the sky. Killed in World War II at age 44, 鈥淪aint Ex鈥澨齱as a pioneering pilot for A茅ropostale in the 1920s, carrying mail over the deadly Sahara on the Toulouse-Dakar route, encountering cyclones, marauding Moors, and lonely nights: 鈥淪o in the heart of the desert, on the naked rind of the planet, in an isolation like that of the beginnings of the world, we built a village of men. Sitting in the flickering light of the candles on this kerchief of sand, on this village square, we waited out the night.鈥澨齏hatever his skills as a pilot鈥攕aid to be extraordinary鈥攁s a writer he is effortlessly sublime. is so humane, so poetic, you underline sentences: 鈥淚t is another of the miraculous things about mankind that there is no pain nor passion that does not radiate to the ends of the earth. Let a man in a garret but burn with enough intensity and he will set fire to the world.鈥澨齋aint-Exup茅ry did just that. No writer before or since has distilled the sheer spirit of adventure so beautifully. True, in his excitement he can be righteous, almost irksome like someone who鈥檚 just gotten religion. But that youthful excess is part of his charm. Philosophical yet gritty, sincere yet never earnest, utterly devoid of the postmodern cop-outs of cynicism, sarcasm, and spite, Saint-Exup茅ry鈥檚 prose is a lot like the bracing gusts of fresh air that greet him in his open cockpit. He shows us what it's like to be subject and king of infinite space.

Personal Canon

Authors sound off on the books that have stuck with them

鈥楾ravels in West Africa鈥� by Mary Kingsley (1897)

I first came across in a library. I sat down on one of those plastic ladders and thumbed through the book, and by the time I reached the checkout desk, I鈥檇 decided to retrace her footsteps.

Although Travels in West Africa was published in 1897, Kingsley鈥檚 humor and sensibility are extraordinarily modern. She started out a very sad woman, a spinster. (In the movie, she鈥檇 be played by Emma Thompson.) Her contemporaries wrote books in which a hero, bent on a specific goal, triumphed over听or was defeated by听geography. But for Kingsley, the journey鈥攁 ramble from Sierra Leone to the 鈥淕reat Peak of the Cameroons鈥濃�攚as the story. And the Africans she met were not merely guides, porters, or villagers, but characters she brought to life as individuals. Hers is a journey about discovery, not just about getting from A to Z, and it is filled with insights.

Kingsley was my companion when I went to West Africa in 1987. I carried her book everywhere, and people were always thrilled to see the name of their village in print. But one old man asked me, as if he were facing down an impostor, 鈥淚f you were here all those years ago, what are you doing here now?鈥澨��Caroline Alexander, author of The Endurance

鈥楳y Side of the Mountain鈥� by听Jean Craighead George (1959)

I can鈥檛 have been the only kid who was inspired by 听to stalk imaginary deer during those short hours between piano lessons and dinner, can I? The story is simple: a听city boy named Sam Gribley runs away to the country, lives in a tree trunk, and survives the winter. My sister and I took the book seriously enough to turn it into a game. After school听we鈥檇 run out to the woods behind our house and pretend to live in a hollowed-out tree, getting by on a diet of nuts and berries. Our game really wasn鈥檛 all that different from the one my parents were playing鈥攔eturning to the farm, trying to live off the land. It was the seventies, after all. But the best thing was that it took us out of the world of obligations. Even as kids you have chores; what Sam had was absolute freedom. He didn鈥檛 have to write an essay on the birds of America鈥攈e had a pet falcon! I think that鈥檚 still true, even for us grown-ups, this desire to get back to a natural state. I just spent ten days hiking in the White Mountains with my dad, and it was great. We were free from obligations the whole time.听鈥�Elizabeth Gilbert, author of

鈥楪rass Beyond the Mountains鈥� by听Richmond P. Hobson Jr.听(1978)

听is the true story of a young man from New York whose business expectations were crushed by the Depression. He headed west, where he became a skilled cowboy. In Wyoming he paired up with a mysterious character, probably a rustler, and the two of them drove in a dilapidated sausage truck to remotest northern British Columbia to start a cattle operation. It was an adventure that should have killed them both, but somehow they succeeded.

Hobson had the most wonderful capacity to convey the natural marvels of that land. He utilized his wide horizon of reference to capture the magic of the country, and in so doing gave us a glimpse of something now gone. The perils of enduring winter in such an implacable landscape are described vividly. The horses had to be tough, and the horsemanship was remarkable. There were cattle drives in blizzards so extreme that cowboys went blind, but the horses got them through. Grass Beyond the Mountains makes a reader wish that he had been there, and vastly relieved that he was not. 鈥�Thomas McGuane, author of

鈥楧ersu the Trapper鈥� by听V. K. Arseniev听(1923)

听is one of the great travel classics and a book that astounds everyone who reads it. Starting in 1902, the Russian explorer V. K. Arseniev traveled throughout the Far East, mapping an untouched corner of Siberia between Manchuria and the Sea of Japan. This is remarkably rugged yet beautiful country, where wolves, leopards, tigers, and bears are all in one place. It was here that Arseniev met and was befriended by Dersu, an indigenous hunter-trapper of the Tungus-Manchu tribes. I know the area well, having worked there while researching my book Tigers in the Snow. In a way, Dersu the Trapper was an inspiration for me. Filmmakers had approached me to write a script based on Dersu, but it was during the Cold War, and because the area they hoped to film in was close to Vladivostok, the permit was denied. When I finally received a permit听years later, I went to track the Amur tigers.

Arseniev wrote in Russian, and the first American edition did not appear until 1941. It is beautifully written, full of evocative material, and has wonderful illustrations drawn by Arseniev himself. As it turns out, there鈥檚 a museum dedicated to Arseniev in Vladivostok. It's a little bit of the old Soviet Union, though. The tigers could use a dusting.听鈥�Peter Matthiessen, 国产吃瓜黑料 contributor and author of

鈥楾he Island Within鈥� by Richard K. Nelson (1989)

Richard K. Nelson is a very great鈥攊f not the greatest鈥攏ature writer we have. Other nature writers agree on his magnificence, which 听established in 1989. What a book.

Nelson is sort of in the position Cormac McCarthy occupied 15 or 20 years ago. Other writers read his stuff鈥�Blood Meridian above all, and Suttree for people southern enough to see how funny it is鈥攂ut general readers were ignorant until All the Pretty Horses came out and his loyal publishers decided to make a fuss.

I鈥檇 not heard a word about The Island Within; it鈥檚 not the sort of thing I read, and the opening made me cringe: a听guy and his dog go to an island off the Alaskan coast for the purpose of鈥攐h, no!鈥攕elf-discovery. How awful that this concept was a pandemic now affecting men. Why did I keep reading?

Well into the book, I found an episode that was so sublime鈥擨 won鈥檛 wreck it for you鈥攁 story told so intelligently,听and so powerful as imagery, I thought, He can鈥檛 keep this up. He should have saved it for last.听The next chapter topped it. The following chapter topped that. And so on! He had achieved escape velocity and was winging it out in the old empyrean with only the very great ones for company. All this, mind you, right on the surface, relating incidents on the island, like a bald eagle鈥檚 swimming in the sea. He bore us out to the pillars where stars condense. Anyone can see stuff and learn facts; it鈥檚 what you make of it. His rhetorical pitch was as wild as Thoreau鈥檚 on Katahdin, transporting as Shakespeare pushing art into the realms that ennoble the reader. I finished The Island Within out of breath.

Then I checked the jacket copy. (Read it last or not at all.)听Turns out I had read Richard K. Nelson before. He was a true cultural anthropologist of the sort that sociobiology had tried to gun down. He had written Hunters of the Northern Ice, about the Inuit, which I loved. How did he get a readable dissertation past his committee?

And it was Nelson who wrote Make Prayers to the Raven (1983), which I had avoided for a stupid reason: its title reminded me of I Heard the Owl Call My Name, a moving little book I found only OK. But after reading The Island Within, I got Make Prayers to the Raven, knowing I wanted to read everything Nelson wrote.

Its subtitle is A Koyukon View of the Northern Forest. The Koyukon Athapaskans are still living intimately with their vast lands in interior northwest Alaska鈥攔ight now鈥攁nd if it bothers you that they use snowmobiles, motorboats, and rifles, too bad鈥攖hey aren鈥檛 a theme park. Their knowledge and thinking differ from ours more than a spear differs from a rifle. Nelson lived with Koyukons and learned their ways, their animating beliefs, and their biology. They live in a mesh of taboos, which Nelson respects. The animals have religious taboos, too. A woman told him that 鈥済estating female beavers will not eat bark from the fork of a branch, because it is apparently tabooed for them.鈥澨齋he was not putting Nelson on; she learned this from her grandfather. Did it never strike reasonable people that a beaver can鈥檛 fit its head in a narrow fork? Maybe taboo started out meaning 鈥渟tupid,鈥澨齛s in, 鈥淚t is stupid to get your sister pregnant.鈥�

These are three wonderful books, and there are more. The Island Within is a masterpiece. Ask any nature writer. Like everyone else, we hate being typed. (Peter Matthiessen's a great novelist.) You almost have to hold a gun at my head to make me read 鈥渘ature writing,鈥澨齜ut I鈥檒l crawl over broken glass for Richard K. Nelson.听鈥�Annie Dillard, author of

鈥楾he Farm on the River of Emeralds鈥� by Moritz Thomsen (1978)

In late听1978, 国产吃瓜黑料 proudly published an excerpt from . I thought the book read like the best of Joseph Conrad, only funny. Thomsen, at 53, had returned to work a farm in Ecuador, where he鈥檇 served with the Peace Corps in the 1960s. We see how poverty twists and distorts people and places. We sit with him as he listens to opera and watches vast thunderstorms roll over the land. We cringe at a reflective honesty that spares no one, least of all the author himself. And then we learn of Arcario Cortez, who, on his honeymoon, made love to his new wife eight times in eight hours: 鈥淗e was another Sir Edmund Hillary who鈥攚ithout ropes or tanks of oxygen or snacks of cheese or chocolate, without Sherpa guides or sponsorship from the National Geographic Society, all on his own with nothing but youthful grit鈥攏ow stood alone on his solitary peak, every bit as exhausted and triumphant as Hillary himself.鈥澨齌homsen died in Ecuador in 1991. He had written four books, all brilliant, but I think The Farm on the River of Emeralds is his masterpiece. Naturally, it is out of print, a tragic circumstance that would have amused Thomsen to no end.听鈥�Tim Cahill, author of

鈥楨yelids of Morning: The Mingled Destinies of Crocodiles and Men鈥� by听Alistair Graham and Peter Beard听(1990)

is the most wonderfully lurid coffee-table book ever assembled. It鈥檚 also a far-ranging meditation on the role of man-eating reptiles in human history and psychology, and a vivid account of a valuable, difficult, bloody scientific study. Over the past three decades it has been out of print, hard to find, impossible to find, venerated as an underground classic, and then back in print. It's currently out of print but findable.

Alistair Graham was the biologist of the team; Peter Beard took the photos and designed the book. Together they spent a year on Lake Rudolf (now called Lake Turkana) in northern Kenya, killing and dissecting about 500 animals in order to learn what they could about Crocodilus niloticus, the Nile crocodile. At that time (1966鈥�68) Graham was a hard-headed young scientist with a visceral admiration for crocodiles and no patience whatsoever for sentimentalizing them. He did some other intriguing work and then, it seems, disappeared. I鈥檝e been trying to locate him for three years, in connection with a project about big predators. No luck. I鈥檝e traced him from Africa, heard he worked as a chauffeur in England, and found folks who knew him as manager of a crocodile farm in northern Australia. Then the trail goes cold. Alistair, if you鈥檙e reading this: Great book! And please call me.听鈥�David Quammen, 国产吃瓜黑料 editor at large and author of

鈥楢cross Arctic America鈥� by Knud Rasmussen (1927)

During his nearly three-year dogsled journey (1921鈥�24) from Greenland to Point Barrow, Alaska, explorer Knud Rasmussen amassed roughly 6,000 pages of field notes that were condensed in 1927 into . When I first went to Greenland in 1993, I took an old, out-of-print copy. It was like holding living history. Rasmussen lived in igloos and houses made of stone, bone, and turf, and his descriptions of the white landscape, and of life on the ice鈥攚here you got around by sled only, lived by the light of seal-blubber lamps, and hunted and ate whales鈥攅xcite the imagination.

In spring, when there is round-the-clock light and it's difficult to sleep, the Inuit I was dogsledding with would ask me to read passages aloud, even though they couldn't understand my English version. They all knew about Rasmussen, though, and loved to listen. 鈥淕ive me dogs, give me winter,鈥澨齢e wrote, 鈥渁nd you can have the rest.鈥澨�鈥擥retel Ehrlich, author of

Lost Horizons

Ten great books you鈥檝e probably never heard of

鈥楿ttermost Part of the Earth鈥� by听E. Lucas Bridges听(1948)听听

Bridges belonged to one of the first European families to land and hang on for dear life in Tierra del Fuego. (now听sadly听out of print) recalls the adventures that he and his kin endured, usually under such detached headings as Some Observations Concerning Cannibalism听and Instances to Show That the Cow Is More Intelligent Than the Horse.听Once you鈥檙e in, you see why Yvon Chouinard presses this book on first-time trekkers to Patagonia.

鈥楴o Picnic on Mount Kenya鈥� by听Felice Benuzzi听(1953)听

Think听The Great Escape听meets听Life Is Beautiful. From the moment he lays eyes on the looming 17,160-foot peak, Benuzzi鈥檚 determined to climb it. Problem is, he鈥檚 an Italian soldier sitting out World War II in a British POW camp in Kenya. No worries; he breaks out anyway and heads up the mountain without a map. remain intact, even when he comes down and is thrown back in the clink.

鈥楾he Ascent of Rum Doodle鈥� by听W. E. Bowman (1956)听

If this,听the definitive, of the conquest of 鈥渢he world's tallest mountain鈥澨齠ails to leave you gasping for oxygen from all the laughter, see a therapist. A brilliant send-up of self-important peak-bagging gas.

鈥楾he White Spider鈥� by听Heinrich Harrer听(1959)听

Brimming with the suspense and history surrounding his pioneering ascent of the north face of the Eiger in 1938, is a surpassing meditation on the 鈥渟upreme testing place of a man鈥檚 worth as a human being.鈥澨鼿arrer packs every page with reasons why even gazing on the Eiger, much less dangling from its ramparts, makes your palms sweat.

鈥楾he Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst鈥� by Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall听(1970)听

An of one man鈥檚 ill-fated entry into the first round-the-world solo yacht race in 1968. Crowhurst comes unhinged in the Atlantic after falsifying reports about his progress, and then proceeds to lose his way, his mind, and听finally听his life.

鈥楳awson鈥檚 Will鈥� by听Lennard Bickel (1977)听

It鈥檚 hard to keep a straight face reading what Aussie explorer in Antarctica the same year as Scott鈥攊t鈥檚 just so grim. The first of his two comrades plunges with his dog team into a bottomless crevasse. The second succumbs to snowblindness, frostbite, madness, and a coma. Alone, Mawson faces 100 miles of wind, ice, and starvation before he makes it back, his mind and limbs barely intact.

鈥楾he Shining Mountain鈥� by听Peter Boardman (1982)

inside the brains of hardcore alpinists. Motivated to 鈥渂ring my self-respect into line with the public recognition鈥澨齛fter topping out on Everest in 1975, the author hooks up with Himalayan vet Joe Tasker to climb the west wall of Changabang in India. Somehow they live to tell the tale.

鈥楥hasing the Monsoon鈥� by听Alexander Frater听(1990)听

begins in a doctor鈥檚 office in London, with the author wearing an orthopedic collar that makes him 鈥渓ook like a bulging pantomime frog.鈥澨齀t ends in Cherrapunji, India, with Frater utterly soggy but loving life, after having taken a stranger鈥檚 advice to experience monsoon season on the subcontinent. You鈥檒l feel better, too, for tagging along.

鈥楾o Timbuktu鈥� by听Mark Jenkins听(1997)听

With three friends in tow,听国产吃瓜黑料鈥檚 own Hard Way columnist the Niger River. They make it down, and along the way encounter the menacing African welcome wagon鈥擪iller bees! Guinea worms! River blindness! Rhinos! Crocs! But Jenkins never lets the tough stuff (or tense group dynamics) overpower the beauty of the land he floats through.

鈥楢n Unexpected Light鈥� by听Jason Elliot听(1999)听听

of his travels through war-torn Afghanistan nail-biting excursions with mujahideen deep inside mountain caves and up gorgeous slopes flecked with land mines is so exquisite, it sometimes masks the ancient danger lurking in the black heart of one of the world's most forbidding regions.

To Tell the Truth

Is it fact or is it fiction? The perplexing story behind .听By听Patrick Symmes

鈥淵ou won't believe this one,鈥澨齧y oldest friend said as he handed the book to me last year.

The slim but powerful volume was The Long Walk, by Slavomir Rawicz, a cult classic of adventure writing. First published in Britain in 1956, it chronicles how Rawicz, a 25-year-old Polish cavalry officer, broke out of a Soviet labor camp in Siberia in the midst of World War II and ran for his life. With six companions, he trekked 3,000 agonizing miles across Asia, passing through Mongolia, war-torn China, and Tibet before reaching freedom in British India.

Rawicz dictated his story to a Fleet Street ghostwriter in a direct, understated voice that puts his hardships in staggering relief. Despite gritty suffering in deserts and fatal setbacks in icefields, the fugitives struggle southward month after month, surviving on solidarity and sheer guts. The book鈥檚 triumphant but bitter ending leaves readers exhausted; legions of fans offer testimony on Amazon and other websites to the life-changing inspiration of Rawicz鈥檚 heroism. Once out of print, the book now sells 30,000 copies a year听and has been reissued with a new introduction by Sebastian Junger. George Clooney鈥檚 name has been thrown around to play Rawicz in a movie adaptation.

But ever since the book鈥檚 first release, doubters have charged that The Long Walk is literally unbelievable, even a fraud and a hoax. British climber and expedition leader Eric Shipton reputedly hooted at the book鈥檚 description of abominable snowmen; Hugh Richardson, Britain鈥檚 longtime diplomat in Lhasa, cited dozens of errors in a 1957 review for the Himalayan Club Journal听and wondered 鈥渨hether the story is a muddled and hazy reconstruction of an actual occurrence, or mere fiction.鈥�

I myself learned all this later, after I devoured The Long Walk with stunned enthusiasm. In retrospect, it does seem odd that Rawicz鈥檚 Mongolians walk everywhere rather than ride horses, and dress in conical hats and pole their boats up meandering rivers; that sounds more like Vietnam. Rawicz describes going 12 days in the Gobi without water; I recall choking on dust there myself after just a few hours. And I didn鈥檛 know what to make of Rawicz鈥檚 story of meeting two yetis in the high Himalayas.

Rawicz stood by his story. But his London and American publishers both told听me they don鈥檛 believe that every page of the book is strictly what the cover calls a 鈥淭rue Story.鈥澨齊awicz has declined to produce records, photographs, witnesses, or the full identity and whereabouts of the other survivors.

Ghostwriters do embellish things. (Ask Marco Polo.)听Faced with deadly obstacles, men do manage to pull off the impossible. (Shackleton, anyone?)听And plenty of authentic adventurers have exaggerated their achievements. (Admiral Byrd, call your office.)听So while The Long Walk may never earn a secure place among the true classics of survival, here鈥檚 my advice: enjoy it as the great thriller it is. But caveat lector鈥攚hich is Latin, of course, for 鈥測ou won鈥檛 believe this one.鈥�

To Hell and Back

Don鈥檛 cry for L. M. Nesbitt. (OK, maybe cry a little.) By听Bill Vaughn

I don鈥檛 read much expedition lit, preferring girl stories and dysfunctional melodramas to aggressive death-wish chronicles. But one night, weeping as I finished Jennifer Weiner鈥檚 , I wandered into my library looking for another tearjerker and found an adventure yarn so awful I couldn鈥檛 put it down.

鈥淎fter some difficulty we succeeded in obtaining enough camels for our purpose.鈥澨齌hus begins L. M. Nesbitt鈥檚 relentless account of his 1928 expedition with two Italians through the chartless heart of Abyssinia, what is now called Ethiopia. One of the last installments from the jodhpur-and-pith-helmet school of British adventure (and currently out of print), 听is also its crankiest. Bribing his way 400 miles by caravan over the broasted wastelands of the Afar province, the arrogant 37-year-old Nesbitt is not amused by the locals. The 鈥渦nruly鈥澨鼶anakil tribesmen are by turns 鈥渟inister,鈥澨�渞estless,鈥澨齛nd 鈥渟lothful demons鈥澨齱ho appear to wear the dried testicles of their victims around their necks. Nesbitt reminds us鈥攃onstantly鈥攖hat no European has ever returned alive from the region. Like a hypochondriac announcing his pulse rate, he relates the soaring temperatures in the sulfur flats: 146 degrees, or 157, or 168. 鈥淪itting half-stunned in the silence of this glowing furnace,鈥澨齢e records in a style evoking the torpor of playing video games on Xanax, 鈥渨e were like men struck motionless by the curse of fate.鈥�

Nesbitt claimed the 鈥減urpose鈥澨齩f his trip was to collect mineral samples, as he and his pals staggered in an endless fever dream from one dung-fouled water hole to another. But I didn鈥檛 buy it. So if he wasn鈥檛 after some mother lode, what compelled this mad Englishman to go out in the noonday sun? A book contract? A lecture gig at the Royal Geographical Society? Was he just not getting any at home? I kept turning the pages, anticipating the comeuppance that he so richly deserved. Alas, it never came. But the account became perversely more intriguing once I suspected that his maps were intended for the Italian generals who would command the 1935 invasion of Ethiopia. Indeed, a year after his ordeal, Nesbitt traveled to Rome with a present for Mussolini鈥檚 zoo: a crocodile snatched as a baby from the River Awash and carried across Abyssinia in a tin box.

When I finished those final lines, I laughed. And then I cried.

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