Take armchair adventure

By GWEN FLORIO
of the Missoulian

It's not just "because it's there" anymore.

That outlook - it's the response by British mountaineer George Leigh Mallory upon being asked why he wanted to climb Everest - could also apply to generations of adventure books.

Mallory, who died on Everest a year after uttering what some call the most famous three words in mountaineering, didn't write a book about his exploits, but plenty of folks wrote books about him, and about their own feats as well.

It's a jam-packed genre on the seemingly single theme of man (testosterone tends to rule) amid nature. Think Thor Heyerdahl's "Kon-Tiki," about crossing the Pacific on a balsa-wood raft, or Roald Amundson's "My Life as an Explorer" about his Arctic and Antarctic adventures - not to mention Lewis and Clark's journals.

More recently, there was the one-two punch in 1997 of Jon Krakauer's "Into Thin Air," about a disastrous Everest expedition, and Sebastian Junger's "The Perfect Storm," on a killer nor'easter off Gloucester, Mass.

All of those books fit the classic standoff-with-the-elements aspect of outdoors/adventure writing, and that's not totally to the genre's benefit, said several Montana writers whose work gets filed in that category.

"It's an industry now," said Missoula kayaker Doug Ammons ("Whitewater Philosophy," "The Laugh of the Water Nymph"). "Although technically speaking people are really, really skilled at telling these stories, I think the stories lack depth. ... It's such a rote stereotype. Adventure means risk, sensation. It's all (B.S.)."

The result, said Tim Cahill of Livingston, is "the underlying message of the book is that "I can climb this mountain and you can't."

This gentle rebuke, mind you, from someone whose work includes "Jaguars Ripped My Flesh" and "A Wolverine is Eating my Leg."

Despite his mocking tough-guy titles, Cahill set out to do something different with those books and others. As he wrote in his introduction to "Pass the Butterworms," his aim was to change the stereotype of such tales as "directed, apparently, at semiliterate, semi-sad bachelors interested primarily in the ‘nymphos' who, in this genre, seemed to populate the jungles and mountains at the various ends of the earth."

He was spurred, in part, by a book from 1950s, "A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush," by Eric Newby, one that Cahill calls ahead of its time in tone.

"He uses humor and self-deprecation," Cahill said, two qualities that have made his own books enormously successful. Newby, he said, "had a real, genuine adventure that one could see one's own self having and that's what made the book for me."

Likewise, Cahill recommends "Shooting the Boh: A Woman's Voyage Down the Wildest River in Borneo," Tracy Johnston's account of a journey in which hot flashes prove nearly as distressing as episodes threatening life and limb. "Only a woman could have written this wonderfully funny book," Cahill said.

Jon Turk, who divides his time between Darby and Fernie, in British Columbia, picked up on that thread. High on his list is Maria Coffey's "Explorers of the Infinite."

Turk, who has kayaked, climbed, mountain-biked and skied in some of the world's most remote places, says he's read adventure books for five decades and has more or less lost his enthusiasm for the stereotypical chest-thumper.

"But what does seem to be happening right now is that there seems to be a sub-genre going on ... and my books fall into this category, of people who go out into the wilderness and come back with some sort of a spiritual awakening.

"To me, that's a lot more interesting than the genre that says, "I did this and I'm brave and clean and stronger than you are and this is amazing."

Coffey, whose partner died on Everest, subtitled her book: "The Secret Spiritual Lives of Extreme Athletes - and What They Reveal About Near-Death Experiences, Psychic Communication, and Touching the Beyond." Turk likened her book to this year's "Forget Me Not: A Memoir," by Jennifer Lowe-Anker, whose husband, climber Alex Lowe, was killed by a 1999 avalanche in Tiber. Jennifer later married his friend, Conard Anker, injured in the same accident.

"A beautiful classic," Turk called that book.

As with Coffey's work, the subtitle tells much about Turk's new book, "The Raven's Gift: A Scientist, A Shaman, and Their Remarkable Journey Through the Siberian Wilderness," coming out in January.
"It's about spiritual connection," said Turk, of his repeated travels to meet with a shaman in Siberia. As a result of those meetings, he said, "I travel differently. I'm traveling alone now, I'm traveling in extreme environments but with a totally different head space about them and it's been absolutely wonderful."

For Missoula's Peter Stark ("Last Breath: The Limits of Adventure") the book that pushed him toward that space was Peter Mathiessen's "The Snow Leopard."?"I?came to understand the travelogue as a vehicle for a much greater exploration - an intellectual exploration, or an emotional exploration or even a spiritual exploration."

For those same reasons, Missoula's Ammons avoids much modern-day adventure writing and sticks with classics, such as the tales of Joseph Conrad, perhaps best known for his "Heart of Darkness." One of Ammons' favorites is a short story, "Typhoon," which contains this astonishing description of the living, exploding sea and these tiny men in this vastness, and the depth of the psychological understanding of the people facing it. It's got everything going for it."

That same theme underscores what he attempts to do in his own work, "to use these outer journeys to get to inner journeys." All the proceeds from sales of Ammons' books support a school in Tibet.

As for Jon Turk, he says that these days, when he sits down with a book, it's likely to be something like "Breakfast with Buddha," a novel about a cookbook writer who "through a somewhat contrived set of circumstances" ends up on a cross-country road trip with a Zen guru. In its lighthearted way, he said, the novel examines the same question he takes on in "The Raven's Gift" - about someone suddenly finding himself thrust into a more spiritual realm.

The same thing is happening with the adventure book genre, he said.

A decade ago, books like "The Perfect Storm" and "Into Thin Air" "talked about death and tragedy, but they don't talk about that spiritual connectivity," Turk said. "I'm not criticizing - they're great books.
"But I think it's time for the genre to move on."

Missoulian city editor Gwen Florio can be reached at 523-5268 or at gwen
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