The Fish's Eye: Essays about Angling and the Outdoors


Ian Frazier - 2002
    He sees the angler's environment all around him--in New York's Grand Central Station, in the cement-lined pond of a city park, in a shimmering bonefish flat in the Florida Keys, in the trout streams of the Rocky Mountains. He marvels at the fishing in the turbid Ohio River by downtown Cincinnati, where a good bait for catfish is half a White Castle french fry. The incidentals of the angling experience, the who and the where of it, interest him as much as what he catches and how. The essays contain sharply focused observations of the American outdoors, a place filled with human alterations and detritus that somehow remain defiantly unruined. Frazier's simple love of the sport lifts him to a straight-ahead angling description that's among the best contemporary writing on the subject. The Fish's Eye brings together twenty years of heartfelt, funny, and vivid essays on a timeless pursuit where so many mysteries, both human and natural, coincide.

Sixty Meters to Anywhere


Brendan Leonard - 2016
    He knew what not to do--not drink alcohol and not get arrested again. But no one had told him what it was that he could do. He quickly realized that he had to reinvent himself, to find something other than alcohol and its social constructions to build his life around. A few years later, Brendan was sober and had completed a graduate degree in journalism, but he still felt he was treading water, searching for direction. Then his brother gave him a climbing rope. And along that sixty-meter lifeline, Brendan gradually found redemption in the crags of the American West. He became a climber, someone who learned to push past fear, to tough it out during long, grueling days in the mountains; someone who supported his partners, keeping them safe in dangerous situations and volatile environments; someone with confidence, purpose, and space to breathe. Sixty Meters to Anywhere is the painfully honest story of a life changed by climbing, and the sometimes nervous, sometimes nerve-wracking, and often awkward first years of recovery. In the mountains, Leonard ultimately finds a second chance.

The Story of My Boyhood and Youth


John Muir - 1913
    Muir recounts in vivid detail the three worlds of his early life: his first eleven years in Scotland; the years 1849–1860 in the central Wisconsin wilderness; and two-and-a-half most inventive years at the University of Wisconsin during that institution’s infancy.

The Best of Outside: The First 20 Years


Outside Magazine - 1997
    A picaresque ramble with a merry band of tree-cleaners.  The big-wave crusaders of the world's best surfers.  For the past twenty years, Outside magazine has set the standard for original and engaging reports on travel, adventure, sports, and the environment.Along the way, many of America's  best journalists and storytellers--including such writers as Jon Krakauer, Tim Cahill, E. Annie Proulx, Edward Abbey, Thomas McGuane, David Quammen, and Jane Smiley--have made the magazine a venue for some of their most compelling work.  The Best of Outside represents the finest the award-winning magazine has to offer: thirty stories that range from high action to high comedy.  Whether it's Jonathan Raban sailing the open sea, Susan Orlean celebrating Spain's first female bullfighter, or Jim Harrison taking the wheel on a cross-country road trip, each piece can be characterized in a word: unforgettable.  Commemorating Outside magazine's twentieth anniversary, The Best of Outside is one of the most entertaining and provocative anthologies of the decade.

The Third Pole: Mystery, Obsession, and Death on Mount Everest


Mark Synnott - 2021
    a riveting adventure."--OutsideShivering, exhausted, gasping for oxygen, beyond doubt . . . A hundred-year mystery lured veteran climber Mark Synnott into an unlikely expedition up Mount Everest during the spring 2019 season that came to be known as "the Year Everest Broke." What he found was a gripping human story of impassioned characters from around the globe and a mountain that will consume your soul--and your life--if you let it.The mystery? On June 8, 1924, George Mallory and Sandy Irvine set out to stand on the roof of the world, where no one had stood before. They were last seen eight hundred feet shy of Everest's summit still "going strong" for the top. Could they have succeeded decades before Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay? Irvine is believed to have carried a Kodak camera with him to record their attempt, but it, along with his body, had never been found. Did the frozen film in that camera have a photograph of Mallory and Irvine on the summit before they disappeared into the clouds, never to be seen again? Kodak says the film might still be viable. . . .Mark Synnott made his own ascent up the infamous North Face along with his friend Renan Ozturk, a filmmaker using drones higher than any had previously flown. Readers witness first-hand how Synnott's quest led him from oxygen-deprivation training to archives and museums in England, to Kathmandu, the Tibetan high plateau, and up the North Face into a massive storm. The infamous traffic jams of climbers at the very summit immediately resulted in tragic deaths. Sherpas revolted. Chinese officials turned on Synnott's team. An Indian woman miraculously crawled her way to frostbitten survival. Synnott himself went off the safety rope--one slip and no one would have been able to save him--committed to solving the mystery.Eleven climbers died on Everest that season, all of them mesmerized by an irresistible magic. The Third Pole is a rapidly accelerating ride to the limitless joy and horror of human obsession.

How to Stay Alive in the Woods: A Complete Guide to Food, Shelter and Self-Preservation Anywhere


Bradford Angier - 1956
    Broken down into four essential sections, Sustenance, Warmth, Orientation and Safety, this enlightening manual reveals how to catch game without a gun, what plants to eat (full-color illustrations of these make identification simple), how to build a warm shelter, make clothing, protect yourself and signal for help. Detailed illustrations and expanded instructions offer crucial information at a glance, making How to Stay Alive in the Woods truly a lifesaver.

The Ultimate Hang


Derek Hansen - 2011
    

Wildwood: A Journey through Trees


Roger Deakin - 2007
    In Deakin's glorious meditation on wood, the "fifth element"as it exists in nature, in our culture, and in our souls the reader accompanies Deakin through the woods of Britain, Europe, Kazakhstan, and Australia in search of what lies behind man's profound and enduring connection with trees.Deakin lives in forest shacks, goes "coppicing" in Suffolk, swims beneath the walnut trees of the Haut-Languedoc, and hunts bushplums with Aboriginal women in the outback. Along the way, he ferrets out the mysteries of woods, detailing the life stories of the timber beams composing his Elizabethan house and searching for the origin of the apple.As the world's forests are whittled away, Deakin's sparkling prose evokes woodlands anarchic with life, rendering each tree as an individual, living being. At once a traveler's tale and a splendid work of natural history, Wildwood reveals, amid the world's marvelous diversity, that which is universal in human experience.

Minus 148 Degrees


Art Davidson - 1969
    Plagued by doubts and cold, group tension and a crevasse tragedy, the expedition tackled McKinley in minimal hours of daylight and fierce storms. They were trapped at three different camps above 14,000 feet during a six-day blizzard and faced the ultimate low temperature of 148 F.Minus 148 is Art Davidson's stunning personal narrative, supplemented by diary excerpts from team members George Wichman, John Edwards, Dave Johnston, and Greg Blomberg. Davidson retells the team's fears and frictions and ultimate triumph with an honesty that has made this gripping survival story a mountaineering classic for over 40 years.

Ride Your Way Lean: The Ultimate Plan for Burning Fat and Getting Fit on a Bike


Selene Yeager - 2010
    The best way to lose weight is on a bike. In Ride Your Way Lean, Bicycling magazine columnist Selene Yeager provides readers with a comprehensive cycling plan that allows them to shed fat, streamline their bodies, and hone their skills on a bike. Cycling is gentle on the joints, easy to do with friends and family, and burns literally thousands of calories without being a bore or cause for suffering.A weight-loss program for people who want to drop pounds of fat while learning a new sport, this book offers training plans that turbocharge metabolism along with complementary nutritional advice. Each chapter is seasoned with anecdotal tips, success stories, pitfalls, and other advice from real people who have ridden themselves lean.

Bushcraft 101: A Field Guide to the Art of Wilderness Survival


Dave Canterbury - 2014
    Based on the 5Cs of Survivability--cutting tools, covering, combustion devices, containers, and cordages--this valuable guide offers only the most important survival skills to help you craft resources from your surroundings and truly experience the beauty and thrill of the wilderness. Inside, you'll also discover detailed information on: Choosing the right items for your kit. Manufacturing needed tools and supplies. Collecting and cooking food. Protecting yourself from the elements. With Canterbury's guidance, you'll not only prepare yourself for any climate and situation, you'll also learn how to use the art of bushcraft to reconnect with nature in ways you've never imagined.

A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir


Donald Worster - 2008
    A Passion for Nature is the most complete account of the great conservationist and founder of the Sierra Club ever written. It is the first to be based on Muir's full private correspondence and to meet modern scholarly standards. Yet it is also full of rich detail and personal anecdote, uncovering the complex inner life behind the legend of the solitary mountain man. It traces Muir from his boyhood in Scotland and frontier Wisconsin to his adult life in California right after the Civil War up to his death on the eve of World War I. It explores his marriage and family life, his relationship with his abusive father, his many friendships with the humble and famous (including Theodore Roosevelt and Ralph Waldo Emerson), and his role in founding the modern American conservation movement. Inspired by Muir's passion for the wilderness, Americans created a long and stunning list of national parks and wilderness areas, Yosemite most prominent among them. Yet the book also describes a Muir who was a successful fruit-grower, a talented scientist and world-traveler, a doting father and husband, a self-made man of wealth and political influence. A man for whom mountaineering was "a pathway to revelation and worship."For anyone wishing to more fully understand America's first great environmentalist, and the enormous influence he still exerts today, Donald Worster's biography offers a wealth of insight into the passionate nature of a man whose passion for nature remains unsurpassed.

Above the Clouds: How I Carved My Own Path to the Top of the World


Kilian Jornet - 2018
    

Conquistadors of the Useless


Lionel Terray - 2001
    An engagingly written portrait of the times and climbs of premier French mountainerer Lionel Terray by himself, including the Eigerwand, Fitzroy, Annapurna and other groundbreaking expeditions.

On the Edge: The Art of High-Impact Leadership


Alison Levine - 2014
    By reflecting on the lessons learned from her various expeditions, author Alison Levine makes the case that the leadership principles that apply in extreme adventure sport also apply in today's extreme business environments. Both settings require you to be able to make crucial decisions on the spot when the conditions around you are far from perfect. Your survival—and the survival of your team—depend on it. On the Edge provides a framework to help people scale whatever big peaks they aspire to climb-be they literal or figurative-by offering practical, humorous, and often unorthodox advice about how to grow as a leader.