(Hatchet) A survival story in the wilderness and a quick read.

Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana

"Listening for Coyote" by William L Sullivan. Oregon author hikes across the state from Cape Blanco to the bottom of Hell's Canyon and meets many interesting people as well as scenery. His purpose was to link most of the wilderness areas in Oregon shortly after the 1984 Wilderness Act, but it's the people he met who provide the most interest.

Edited by hikinggranny on 04/26/2012 13:13:53 MDT.

Fire Season: Field Notes from a Wilderness Lookout by Phillip Connors

Description on Amazon:

A decade ago Philip Connors left work as an editor at the Wall Street Journal and talked his way into a job far from the streets of lower Manhattan: working as one of the last fire lookouts in America. Spending nearly half the year in a 7' x 7' tower, 10,000 feet above sea level in remote New Mexico, his tasks were simple: keep watch over one of the most fire-prone forests in the country and sound the alarm at the first sign of smoke.

Fire Season is Connors's remarkable reflection on work, our place in the wild, and the charms of solitude. The landscape over which he keeps watch is rugged and roadless—it was the first region in the world to be officially placed off limits to industrial machines—and it typically gets hit by lightning more than 30,000 times per year. Connors recounts his days and nights in this forbidding land, untethered from the comforts of modern life: the eerie pleasure of being alone in his glass-walled perch with only his dog Alice for company; occasional visits from smokejumpers and long-distance hikers; the strange dance of communion and wariness with bears, elk, and other wild creatures; trips to visit the hidden graves of buffalo soldiers slain during the Apache wars of the nineteenth century; and always the majesty and might of lightning storms and untamed fire.

Written with narrative verve and startling beauty, and filled with reflections on his literary forebears who also served as lookouts—among them Edward Abbey, Jack Kerouac, Norman Maclean, and Gary Snyder—Fire Season is a book to stand the test of time.


*This is high on my list to read Adan- have only heard good things about this book, but cannot recommend it with any authority, just hearsay my friend. We could read it together and do a little post R2R2R long distance book club. ;-p

I've read Cormac's "The Road", "No Country for Old Men", as well as "All the Pretty Horses". I'm going to take Craig up on the suggestion for "Blood Meridian", its the first in McCarthy's Border Trilogy. You should do the same.

Mountaineering in the SIerra Nevada. And it's out of copyright, so it's free on a Kindle or Nook. Great story about one of California's first geologists. He climbs several peaks in the Sierra in hobnail boots, using only a lariat that he borrows from a mule drive for a climbing rope. And his character sketches of the people he meets in the early days of California are VERY funny.

Give your heart to the hawks by winfred blevins. Very interesting book about the mountain men and fur trappers in the american west in the decades after lewis and clark

+1 Jeffery, on McPhee's "Coming into the Country" still the best intro to Alaska's people, politics and geography.

Stegner's "West of the 100th Meridan" ?? Is a broader look at the western expansion (including the Grand Canyon).

Anything by Jared Diamond. "Guns Germs and Steel" is a must read. I found his "The Third Chimpanzee" to be even denser in thought-provoking ideas.

"Men to match my mountains" by Irving Stone.

This is a man who never should have made it past the local fish and chip shop, and yet somehow manages to end up blundering through some amazing true-life adventures.


Also, if you're on the Grapes of Wrath, you really need to be listening to Bruce Springsteen's "The Ghost of Tom Joad" album

Is a great read, especially if you have any connection to or experience hiking the AT.

Across the Wide Missouri by Bernard DeVoto is exceptional. A history of Western expansion through the fur trade. The stories of these mountain men read like fiction.

Anything by Cormac McCarthy. The books mentioned are unreal. Sutree is a fantastic book. Something like a black Huck Finn.

Recover well.

Looks like you got enough recommendations to keep you going for the year, but given your recent Grand Canyon run, you might like "Running on Empty". Marshall Ulrich is the man when it comes to persistence in the face of adversity.

"The Four-Cornered Falcon" by Reg Saner. His account of getting stuck on a rock face after taking a fall is unforgettable. Similar to Abbey's account of getting stuck in a desert sink hole, in "Desert Solitaire"

"My Story As Told By Water" by David James Duncan

"Arctic Dreams" by Barry Lopez

"This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland" by Gretel Ehrlich

These are all some of my favorite books.

And now, for something very different. A trilogy, the southwest and some very unusual trips. Best taken with a grain of salt, yet somehow very entertaining. Warning..extensive use of pschotropics native to the southwest.

The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge
A Seperate Reality
Journey to Ixtlan

Otherwise +5 on anything Cormac McCarthy

Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen (Vintage) by Christopher McDougall


best to you with the recovery!
take arnica!!!!!!
it will speed your healing immensely!

lt

It's not in your sought after topics, but Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut.

For one that is, I second Into Thin Air.

Edited by Trout on 04/26/2012 16:46:53 MDT.

If you want to go with the Grand Canyon theme...

Encounters with the Archdruid by John Mcphee (follows David Brower through various dealings, including a rafting trip down the Grand Canyon) ;

Down the Great Unknown: John Wesley Powell's 1869 Journey of Discovery and Tragedy Through the Grand Canyon by Edward Dolnick (self explanatory; great read!)

If you want to go with the Southern CA theme...

Ecology of Fear by Mike Davis (examines LA's natural ecology juxtaposed against it's environmental and social disasters)

The Californios by Louis L'Amour (western novel that takes place in what is now the Sespe Wilderness up around Pine Mountain). I've got this loaded on my iphone ready for my next trip to the area.

Mines, Murders and Grizzlies by Charlies Outland (lots of interesting historic stories of Ventura's backcountry, including the Sespe).

I can also attest to Guns, Germs and Steel as an interesting read and I'm currently reading Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana which someone else also recommended.

Lots of great ideas here, but you may have to stay in bed the whole summer! :-)

I second Born to Run. What an interesting book that was.

+ 1 on Paul's "Mountaineering in the Sierra" by King (yes of Mt. King fame); even better, imho, "Up and Down California" by Brewer. Brewer and King were part of the earliest geologic survey of California. Believe me, they're both great reads.

Also +1 on all of David's suggestions, and throw in Stegner's "Angle of Repose".

And if that's not enough, Mark Twain's book on coming out west as a reporter during the gold rush--whose title escapes me--is terrific. It's pretty much written during the same historical period as Brewer's and King's books. Among other things, Twain travels to Lake Tahoe when very few non-natives had seen it, declares the lake far more beautiful than Lake Como in Italy, then claims to set the whole forest around on fire by accident before leaving.

But buy these from your local bookseller, please! Out of print is forgotten and lost behind an avalanche of Clancy and Cornwell, who are all you'll ever hear about if Amazon has its way!