Book picks similar to
The Story of a Thousand-Year Pine by Enos A. Mills


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Xander


Lana Dash - 2020
    Most people have the same idea of what beautiful is—and I’m not it. A house fire left me more than just homeless as a child. It left me with a permanent reminder of what I survived. Now I hide in long sleeves and scarves, but I wish for the day that someone might look at me and see the real me, not just my scars.XANDERI’ve always had the ability to look at something that’s broken or been thrown away and turn it into something useful. It’s a skill that has given me great pride to help my small mountain community. But there’s a piece of me that’s broken, and it’s beyond my abilities to try and rebuild on my own.A mountain man in search of a bride. A curvy heroine in search of adventure. One week to find out if their love is a true match.MOUNTAIN MEN MATCHMAKER is a series of short, sweet, and steamy romances about curvy women finding love and adventure with rugged mountain men. Read XANDER if you like scars of the past, action-adventure, with a happily ever after. No cheating. No cliffhangers.

Mr Pikes: The Story Behind The Ibiza Legend


Tony Pike - 2017
    the real Hugh Hefner BOY GEORGE Tony created the concept of the boutique hotel. PAUL OAKENFOLD Roguish and very appealing. I like ebullient, charming characters. GRACE JONES I found extraordinary peace at Pikes, and Tony Pike is the best host... the number one ! JOAN BAEZ There's no place like Pikes. You arrive... then a few days later you come round again without fully knowing quite what happened... but you know it was great. KYLE SIMMONS (BASTILLE) I have never seen a man so happy in a leopard skin thong as Tony ! SHIRLEY KEMP (WHAM) Thanks for a fab time, Tony FREDDIE MERCURY

Carry On: Stan Zuray's Journey from Boston Greaser to Alaskan Homesteader


Tim Attewell - 2017
    As the Vietnam war took more and more of his friends, and many of those who returned sank further into drugs and despair, Stan looked for meaning and found nothing. His life's purpose lay thirty-three hundred miles northwest, deep in the Tozitna River Valley in the heart of Alaska's frozen interior. Deadly cold, famine, grizzly bears, and one unruly sled dog with a grudge kept Stan on the knife's edge between survival and death. Humbled by the power of nature, the Boston greaser who was destined for prison found a new life in the wild, where one mistake can prove fatal. This is the true story of Stan Zuray's incredible journey; the reformation of a man's heart and mind in the forbidding darkness of Alaska's endless winter.

Icefall: Adventures at the Wild Edges of Our Dangerous, Changing Planet


John All - 2017
    No one knows the outer limits of our changing planet quite like him. In May 2014, the mountaineer and scientist John All plunged into a crevasse in the Himalayas, a fall that all but killed him. He recorded a series of dramatic videos as he struggled to climb seven stories back up to the surface with a severely dislocated shoulder, internal bleeding, a battered face covered in blood, and fifteen broken bones--including six cracked vertebrae. The videos became a viral sensation, an urgent and gripping dispatch from one of the least-known extremes of the planet. Yet this climb for his life is only the latest of John All's adventures in some of Earth's most hostile climates. He has also been chased by a wild hyena, scaled Everest, and narrowly missed being hit by an avalanche, all in pursuit of his true calling: the study of how we can master the challenge of our world's changing climate. Icefall is a thrilling adventure story and a report from the extremes of the planet, taking you to collapsing Andean glaciers, hidden jungles in Honduras, and the highest points on Earth. In this gripping account, our changing climate is not a matter of politics; it's a matter of life and death and the human will to survive and thrive in the face of it.

A Scorpion In The Lemon Tree: Mad adventures on a Greek peninsula


Marjory McGinn - 2016
    How did this happen? Easy, this is Greece and nothing ever goes to plan. The couple’s latest adventure in Koroni, on the Messinian peninsula, takes them on another perilous and funny journey, with house rental dramas, scorpion threats, a publishing upheaval, and much more. But when they are finally seduced by the charm of unspoilt Koroni, make new friends, grapple with Greek lessons, and reconnect with some of the memorable characters of their Mani days, they discover once more why they continue to be in love with this resilient country, despite its ongoing economic crisis. And there’s not even a sting in this tale. Well … almost! REVIEWS: "This book is rare within the travel writing genre. It cleverly combines a travel narrative with enlightened observations about Greece, while retaining a light and entertaining touch throughout.” – Peter Kerr, best-selling author of Snowball Oranges

La Doctora: An American Doctor In The Amazon


Linnea Smith - 1998
    Linnea Smith went to Peru on an ecotourism vacation. She was so moved that she abandoned her thriving medical practice in Wisconsin to serve the Yagua Indians in the deepest part of the Amazon rainforest of Peru-alone.Taken straight from the pages of Dr. Smith’s journal, La Doctora offers readers a rare glimpse into the suspense and drama of practicing medicine in a culture far removed from the sophisticated supplies and supports of 20th-century medicine.Learn how Dr. Smith evolved from a “strange white woman” to an adopted member of the indigenous community. Her story of adventure, self-discovery and service creates inspiring testimony to one person’s power to make a lasting difference.

A Man's Life: Dispatches from Dangerous Places


Mark Jenkins - 2007
    His journeys are as intellectual and spiritual as they are physical, and we are by his side, in his head." So wrote Robin Russin for the LA Times about Mark Jenkins’s last book, The Hard Way.In A Man’s Life, Jenkins walks across northern Afghanistan, retracing the ancient route of Marco Polo; clandestinely enters northern Burma, slipping along the forgotten Burma Road; climbs a new route in Uganda’s Mountains of the Moon; bicycles across Lithuania with a long-lost friend; canoes through Surinam with the Maroons, descendants of escaped slaves. Described by critic Bill Berkeley as having a "Whitmanesque openness to experience," Jenkins’s desire to explore and understand the world has pushed him to extremes most of us cannot imagine—being arrested in a dozen different countries from Tibet to Tajikistan, breaking a dozen bones, climbing inside glaciers in Iceland, narrowly escaping falling glaciers on Mont Blanc. Through his willingness to put himself out there, Jenkins captures profound glimpses of our chaotic, contradictory, ever-morphing world.A Man’s Life shares how these experiences change Jenkins from a reckless young globetrotter to a mature, contemplative family man who seeks adventure because he viscerally must, and yet is constantly aware of the dangers of the world and its cool-faced indifference to one man’s life. Each departure from home could be permanent and each homecoming is layered with pathos—his latest journey might have cost him his daughter’s first steps or his wife’s birthday. The tales in A Man’s Life explore the razor’s edge between life and death, as well as the nature of love and friendship, failure and redemption. Together, they unite Jenkins’s stunning travels with his lucid contemplations on the meaning of it all.Praised by Richard Bernstein in The New York Times for being able to "[transform] a common sight into a moment of pure magic" and by Amanda Heller in the Boston Globe as "blessed with a rare combination of physical and intellectual grace … he makes us understand what pushes the man who pushes the envelope," Jenkins is one of the rare writers who channels action-packed adventure into lyrical, evocative storytelling.

Uncharted: A Couple's Epic Empty-Nest Adventure Sailing from One Life to Another


Kim Brown Seely - 2019
    This is an adventure story about a voyage from one life chapter to another that involves a too-big sailboat, a narrow and unknown sea, and an appetite to witness a mythical blonde bear that inhabits a remote rainforest.Kim Brown Seely and her husband had been damn good parents for more than 20 years. That was coming to an end as their youngest son was about to move across the country. The economy was in freefall and their jobs stagnant, so they impulsively decided to buy a big broken sailboat, learn how to sail it, and head up through the Salish Sea and the Inside Passage to an expanse of untamed wilderness in search of the elusive blonde Kermode bear that only lives in a secluded Northwest forest. Theirs was a voyage of discovery into who they were as individuals and as a couple at an axial moment in their lives. Wise and lyrical, this heartfelt memoir unfolds amid the stunningly wild archipelago on the far edge of the continent.

Falling Cars and Junkyard Dogs


Jay Farrar - 2013
    Recollections of Farrar's father are prominent throughout the stories. Ultimately, it is music and musicians that are given the most space and the final word since music has been the creative impetus and driving force for the past 35 years of his life.In writing these stories, he found a natural inclination to focus on very specific experiences; a method analogous to the songwriting process. The highlights and pivotal experiences from that musical journey are all represented as the binding thread in these stories, illustrated throughout with photography from his life. If life is a movie, then these stories are the still frames.

The Shipping Forecast: A Miscellany


Nic Compton - 2016
    It has inspired songs, poetry and imaginations across the globe – as well as providing a very real service for the nation’s seafarers who might fall prey to storms and gales. In 1995, a plan to move the late-night broadcast by just 12 minutes caused a national outcry and was ultimately scrapped.Published with Radio 4 and the Met Office, The Shipping Forecast is the official miscellany for seafarers and armchair travellers alike. From the places themselves – how they got their names, what’s happened there through the ages – to the poems and parodies that it’s inspired, this is a beautifully evocative tribute to one of Britain's – and Radio 4's – best-loved broadcasts.

The Secret DJ


The Secret DJ - 2018
    The life of an international DJ playing at the most exotic destinations worldwide, in the most precarious of psychic circumstances, is rich to the point of toxicity. A globally-known DJ choosing to keep his identity secret takes us on a journey into the heart of life lived in the hedonistic fast lane of club culture for 30 years. Whether playing to 10,000 fans in Ibiza or in a local pub function room, this is a cautionary tale for the rave generation whose days of pills, thrills, and bellyaches are behind them. It may, as well, contain advice: though we cannot advise that it is always followed.This book is not an instruction manual - more a cautionary tale that may illuminate anyone who has harboured ambition to pack a dancefloor...

Discovery of the Yosemite, and the Indian War of 1851


Lafayette Houghton Bunnell - 1977
    In the distance an immense cliff loomed, apparently to the summit of the mountains. Written by the medical officer of the Mariposa Battalion (the first group of Euro-Americans to enter the valley), Discovery of the Yosemite, and the Indian war of 1851 is perhaps the single most important original source we have that focuses on the early history of Yosemite Valley. Out of print for many years, this wonderful source chronicles key historical events surrounding the discovery of Yosemite, including the 1851 conflict with the Yosemite native population, and the naming of various landmarks. What makes this source particularly valuable and rich is the first person perspective provided by Dr Bunnel’s narrative. Lafayette Houghton Bunnell, born in 1824 in Rochester, New York, was an American author, explorer, and physician. Inspired by the males in his family, Bunnell desired adventure in ‘the West’ from a young age. He is perhaps most well-known for his involvement in the Mariposa Battalion, and is often credited as the person who named Yosemite. He was also a soldier and surgeon I the American Civil War. Albion Press is an imprint of Endeavour Press, the UK's leading independent digital publisher. For more information on our titles please sign up to our newsletter at www.endeavourpress.com. Each week you will receive updates on free and discounted ebooks. Follow us on Twitter: @EndeavourPress and on Facebook via http://on.fb.me/1HweQV7. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.

Wild Guide Scotland: Hidden Places, Great Adventures & the Good Life


Kimberley Grant - 2017
    This guide to Scotland and the Scottish highlands and islands, one of Europe's fastest growing adventure holiday destinations, explores the hidden parts of its better known tourist areas, as well many more remote regions, rarely visited by tourists. Guiding you to over 800 wild swims, ancient forests, lost ruins and hidden beaches. Including inns, wild camping, local crafts, artisan whisky distilleries and wild places to stay.

Eminent Dogs, Dangerous Men: Searching through Scotland for a Border Collie


Donald McCaig - 1991
    McCaig delves into the mysterious pact between dog and man, which involves trust and deep communication. Traveling from town to town, to competitions and farms, meeting shepherds and trainers, McCaig introduces us to unforgettable animal and human characters.

Up with the Lark: My Life on the Land


Joan Bomford - 2015
    is an ode both to the soil, and those who have worked it alongside her' Daily Telegraph Joan Bomford wanted to be a farmer so much she always wore a tie like her dad. She ran away from school whenever she could to help him. As an 8 year-old she was the first person in the family to drive a tractor. No job was ever too tough for her. Now aged 83, she's still as active, still driving tractors, still feeding the farm's beef cattle and horses, and still giving riding lessons.This is her account of a lifelong love-affair with the land and the people who work on it. With the warmth and wit of a born story teller, she tells us what it's been like to live through an era of enormous change, her love of animals kindled by her father's shire horses who did all the heavy work until machinery took over. Up With The Lark is not only the portrait of a forgotten era, but also the story of one woman's overwhelming desire to do the thing she cared about more than anything else - being Farmer Joan.