Hike With NITRO

I’m really excited to announce that my friend Karen “Nocona” Somers has published the first ever hiker’s guidebook to the Lone Star Hiking Trail, a 96-mile forested footpath north of Houston, Texas.

She tells me that “all my profit will be donated back to the trail, which has struggled (despite its 40-year history) to be taken seriously by the US Forest Service and other organizations. Like many trails, it relies on volunteers for its continuing existance. I’ve agreed to handle some aspects of marketing and promotion, and this is one (perhaps pathethic!) attempt at getting the word out. If I can sell enough copies, the trail gains that much more legitamacy and support when it comes time to argue for its continued protection by the USFS. I’ve been working many years now trying to promote this trail, because its the only “long distance” trail in all of Texas. That’s a shame, but it’s also a start. I am also involved in a contributing to a hiking master plan for Texas that will propose more miles, maybe thousands of miles, of hiking trails in a state that definitely deserves and needs them. This trail may end up being only the beginning of a real long distance trail, one that spans the entirety of Texas. For now, it’s a nice place to take a quiet walk, especially enjoyable in the winter season.”

I am very excited for Nocona and I hope that if you are interested in hiking in Texas that you pick up a copy of her new guide book to the Lone Star Hiking Trail. Happy Trails!

Book Review:  Cry of the Kalahari by Mark and Delia Owens

Cry of the Kalahari, by Mark and Delia Owens is an incredible story of two, young, idealistic, scientists, who set out to save our world…quite literally.  After meeting in college, studying biology and getting married, they sold almost all of their possessions and flew to Africa to study some of the last and most remote wildernesses on earth. 

After much searching they found and settled on Deception Valley, along a fossil river bed deep in the Kalahari Game Reserve.  Here they studied lions, brown hyenas and almost any other animal, migratory pattern and desert adaptation they could notice.  They tracked animals for hundreds or thousands of hours, endured oppressive 120 degree temperatures, severe drought and heart break all while living in a tent, in the desert, isolated from people and help.  It was intense. 

Mark and Delia devoted 7 years to their research but more important than their research is their unending quest to make their research heard.  Although they are thorough scientists, it’s their dedication and advocacy that is perhaps more impressive.  They constantly wrote articles to highlight the issues in the Kalahari; they wrote proposals and sent them to government officials.  They endured civil chaos in Botswana in order to return to their research, to save those animals. 

The stories told by Mark and Delia are amazing.  They way in which they tell them in the book (each person writing a chapter or two and alternating) is refreshing, not confusing and is ingenious.  Not only was this book a good read, it made me feel like I was privy to glimpsing into their camp, into their lives without all of the difficulty of actually being there.  I felt like I knew the animals they wrote about.  At the end of the book when they were flying away from Deception Valley to go back to the U.S., I felt as they must have, they were flying away from those animals and I was leaving those animals too, the book was over. 

I whole heartedly recommend Cry of the Kalahari.  My review doesn’t do the book justice.  You must read it to feel moved the way I felt moved. 

Book Review:  No Shortcuts To The Top by Ed Viesturs

No Shortcuts to the Top, by Ed Viesturs, is an autobiography retelling the stories, trials and tribulations of the author’s life.  Lucky for us that Mr. Viesturs’ life is anything but ordinary and his stories of high elevation mountaineering are gripping and inspiring. 

This book is a compilation of stories that detail Ed Viesturs’ life from childhood through vet school, through marriage and the completion of “Endeavor 8000” and almost up to the present.  This book is more of a collection of stories, grouped by relevance than a chronology which may present a bit of a challenge to linear thinkers but his stories are griping and honest and a great read. 

In his quest to complete “Endeavor 8000”, to climb the world’s 14 peaks that rise above 8,000 meters, Mr. Viesturs has made many friends, has been to places that are unfathomable to visit and balanced a family life.  His mantra “Reaching the summit is optional.  Getting down is mandatory”, the rational, collected, and calm decision making upon which he relies is perhaps the greatest lesson one can learn from the book.  It is also what made him successful in the end.  He is perhaps the ultimate “Risk Manager”. 

Called by Jon Krakauer “a genuine american hero”, Mr. Viesturs has seen his share of tragedy on the mountain, including the 1996 Everest disaster.  He has been there to assist when other climbers were in danger even sacrificing his own summit bids.  His integrity and dedication to both other people and his goals are unwavering.  We can all learn something about humanity from Ed Viesturs. 

From mountain guiding on Mt. Rainer, to climbing (and returning from) the world’s 14 highest peaks (without bottled oxygen), to running the New York Marathon, to an Arctic adventure with the likes of Will Steger and Sir Richard Branson, Viesturs has packed more into his life than most people can imagine.  He shows caution and reverence to the places he visits and shows a deep respect for the people he has met along the way. 

I highly recommend picking up a copy of No Shortcuts To The Top.  Curl up with some hot cocoa, a warm blanket and spend sometime getting to know Ed Viesturs. 

Book Review:  The Thousand Mile Summer in Desert and High Sierra by Colin Fletcher

Colin Fletcher is an iconic figure in outdoor literature and modern day backpacking.  Many people know him as the author of Man Who Walked Through Time or The Complete Walker.  His books have changed people’s views of the outdoors and have inspired countless people to don their backpack and get outside. 

I had the honor to win his book, , in a raffle at ALDHA-West, a hiker gathering.  I was quite possibly the happiest and luckiest person in the room, after all, I won the book while others were winning titanium flasks, t-shirts, sleeping bags and other such non-sense.

I haven’t read any of Mr. Fletcher’s works in the past.  It had always been on my radar but just never in my reading queue.  But ALDHA-West changed that and I am now a better person having read him, having gotten go to along with him on his journey, backpacking up through the state of California from Mexico to Oregon.

The book, The Thousand Mile Summer, was quite different than I expected and it seemed to me that he was young and a bit inexperienced in a way, but his descriptions are magical and artistic.  His prose made me yearn to be out hiking in the desert, experiencing my own desert landscape and then in the Sierra, having glacial bowls carved into granitic giants as my backdrop. 

It is perhaps his personal evolution, his maturity as the story progresses that is of the most interest to me.  In the beginning of the story he is deathly and violently afraid of rattlesnakes.  So much so he has a tirade about the evil that emanates from them and then beats one to death.  I was totally perplexed by this.  From a man who is a hiking icon, I was shocked by this behavior.  But as the story progresses, he learns from a ranger the importance of rattlesnakes and the impact they have on the ecosystem, and the impact not having them would have on the ecosystem.  He learns to let them be, to let them live, that they are not evil.  As happens for many people, with knowledge comes decreased fear and increased understanding and peace.  Mr. Fletcher is no exception. 

Mr. Fletcher’s book is full of colorful stories of the people he met and the places he visited.  He has his idiosyncrasies and is not afraid to display them, most notably his firm belief that rattlesnakes ooze evil and, coming in a close second, his obsession with Silver King and it’s Piute cutthroat trout.    He is honest and shows reverence when musing about Yellowstone National Park and the 5 men who found it.  “Back in civilization, they registered no land or mineral claims.  Instead, they wrote and lectured on the wonders of Yellowstone’s natural beauty.”

I think the best passage to describe the book, and Mr. Fletcher’s message, is found on page 188.  He says, “Before long the sun dropped behind a line of stark peaks.  Down on the valley floor it was suddenly very gray.  But I knew that the copper-red dragonfly beside the Rubicon had given me something I would never altogether lose.  And I knew that it was for moments like these that people came to the Wild Area. 

Wilderness would be worth conserving if it did nothing but make such moments possible.  And as I walked I found myself wishing I could thank the five men who had sat around their Yellowstone campfire in the fall of 1870.  It would have been satisfying for them to know that their altruism that night-their altruism in a cockpit of rapacity and exploitation-had done so much not only for me but for the nesting Girl Scouts and for Thor astride his horse and for the father and son fishing in Lake Aloha and for Jinny stretching ecstatically on the mountain top and for Twig in his jeep and for millions of other Americans and for millions more, born and yet to be born, all over the world.” 

Thank you Mr. Fletcher for reminding me of your message, of the importance of gratitude to those before us, the importance of treasuring what you have at the moment, the importance of what we leave to future generations and for letting me live vicariously through your adventure.  It was a pleasure to read your words.