10 books like The Living Mountain

I first read this among my father’s books as a child. I believe he had met Smythe in London in the early 30, thus his signed copy of The Valley of Flowers. This is the quintessential book of that era of passionate amateur climbing and exploration, the age of Shipton and Tilman, of highly knowledgeable and deeply eccentric personalities. The writing is lyrical, just this side of purple, earthed by Smythe’s passion for botany, photography, and close observation. In the true sense of amateur, Kanchenjunga is a great adventure expedition in a time that will not come again. This is the book that prompted me to accept an invitation to climb with an expedition on a serious Himalayan mountain with real mountaineers, despite my lack of experience and hardwired dislike of heights. It changed my life. I like to think Smythe would have approved.

Betty Stark was the aunt of a friend of mine, and she was part of the first all women Himalayan expedition in 1955. It is an antidote to the very all-male outlook and structures of many climbs of that time. It had no leader, no ‘lead climbers’. Instead, they were a small team of friends, all experienced and capable, who wished only to explore, encounter, and climb as high and hard as they could. It is anti-heroic, recording the pains, sufferings, and losses and highs, quietly downplaying and yet the efforts and dangers come through. They were outliers and trailblazers. They made their point. They were the point.

The sole novel left by legendary Scottish mountaineer Dougal Haston - prickly, opinionated, striking, not given to self-doubt, probably the finest all-around climber of his day. It has a great opening when an incensed young ambitious climber barrels his motorbike up the winding Loch Lubnaig road on his way to Glencoe, goes on to include a fictional version of his epic on the Eiger when the great American climber1966  John Harlin fell to his death beside him, and Haston helped rescue a stranded group of climbers and after a week-long drama finally summited the North Face. It is raw, emotional (has a classic climber’s love story), philosophical, full of impatience to climb, to live more. After finishing the first draft in Chamonix, Haston went to ski the same avalanche-prone gully where his central character in the book had been avalanched and miraculously survived – Haston did not. I saw him… show more.

Probably the funniest and most inventive climbing expedition book ever written, loved by climbers who appreciate its satire, spoof, mickey-taking pastiche of Serious Mountaineering Expedition Books. It is Chris Bonnington turned Wodehouse, Jon Krakauer rendered by Spike Milligan. Its knowing self-mockery of all the tropes and self-important delusions of Climbing is sharp and accurate enough to raise it high above whimsy. Wildly creative, it is impossible to read without snorting in one’s sleeping bag. It is the comic, ridiculous side of the great pursuit of Getting Higher.

Christmas's tale was one of the two narratives (out of dozens I read) that inspired me to make pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago, the other being Emilio Estevez's film, The Way. What I admire about Christmas is that she is unafraid of criticisms that will inevitably be directed towards a female writer who tells it all, just like it is: Her distaste for the women who accompanied her on a pilgrimage. Her decision to move on alone. Her unstinting descriptions of dismay about the physical challenges of long-distance hiking. Her distrust of men who have intentions on her person! Yet Christmas's experience is not all negative. Like other "true pilgrims," Christmas steps out of her western, worried, ego-centered self and finds a refreshing new perspective.

In choosing my favorite Bryson travelogue for my list, I alternated between A Walk in the Woods and Notes from a Small Island. The latter's setting gives more material—no less than Britain's entire history, geography, and culture—in contrast to the Appalachian Trail's "Long Green Tunnel" of rocks, trees, and shoddy shelters. Bryson's good nature redeems his shortcomings. Even when he's taking the mickey out of individuals and nationalities, it's clear that he's playing the English national sport rather than condescending. Bryson is all voice; he is not particularly interesting when expatiating on science or history or industry (yawn!), but he is always funny when he reflects on human folly. His deft use of hyperbole, understatement, and paradox recalls English masters such as Jonathan Swift, Jane Austen, and Geoffrey Chaucer.

This winner of the Pulitzer Prize is not about going someplace, but about truly discovering what is in your own backyard. Dillard spent a year alone studying in intimate detail the natural environment around her Virginia home. Her realizations about the capriciousness and brutality of life on earth were both unsettling and beautifully powerful. She said: “There is no one standing over evolution with a blue pencil to say, ‘now that one, there, is absolutely ridiculous and I won’t have it. Not only did the creator create everything, but that he is apt to create anything. He will stop at nothing.” If you are fascinated by nature, you must read this book.

Mahoney's courage, intelligence, and eloquence make her an intimate companion on my armchair journeys. I knew I could follow this woman anywhere when she wrote of camping in Israel to the sound of bombs in Palestine (A Singular Pilgrimage). The dangers are even greater when she decides to paddle down the Nile in a rowboat. She presents such a persistent challenge to Egyptians—a woman traveling alone, buying a boat, talking to strangers—that she ultimately concedes and dons a masculine disguise. She often leavens the dread that readers may feel with irony and humor. When an Egyptian man complains of the "whorish" British women who hire gigolos, Rosemary levelly replies that it must be the gigolos who are prostitutes since they are the ones selling their bodies.

This travel memoir is profoundly engaging. Before reading it, I had never thought of the archetypal Trail—that magnetic beacon of healthy recreation—as an actual home for those who couldn't afford a house or apartment. It is precisely Raynor and (husband) Moth's precarious economic situation that gives a cliff-hanging appeal to this tale of hiking the South West Coast trail through Somerset, Cornwall, and Devon. At quaint village stores, this couple doesn't just resupply with noodles, tea, and Marmite. They actually pick up their weekly dole check, which isn't always enough to keep them in Cadburys. On the Salt Path, British class snobbery is alive and well: many people snub them instantly upon learning their circumstances. I felt both humbled and uplifted by this inspiring story.

This was the first piece of British nature writing I ever read, and it inspired me to get up out of my armchair and go for an adventure on the Ridgeway. The adventure ended in some of the worst blisters I have ever seen, but the experience stayed with me and rekindled a love for the British landscape. I find it a magical idea that our land is crisscrossed by a network of ancient pathways, and that we are walking in the footsteps of our ancestors.