Books I want to remember
THE SUN IS A COMPASS chronicles a 4,000-mile human-powered expedition from the Pacific rainforest to the Arctic coast. For six months, Caroline and her husband, Pat, crossed some of the most remote and rugged places left on earth. A unique blend of science, adventure, and personal narrative, the book explores the bounds of the human body and the... See more
The Sun is a Compass — Caroline Van Hemert
Way Out There is an account of J. Robert Harris’s extraordinary exploits while backpacking in some of the world’s most tantalizing places―largely alone and unsupported. And after almost fifty years of wilderness travel, “J. R.,” as he’s known, has plenty of tales to tell! His stories are by turns funny, tragic, and uplifting, and are all told in... See more
Way Out There: Adventures of a Wilderness Trekker
Leaves, soil and seeds. Not normally words that make your pulse race. But they do light a fire in the mind and heart of Hope Jahren. In her hands, you will never feel the same way about these words again. Leaves become elegant machines, soil is the interface between the living and the dead, and seeds, well, they are transformed into the most... See more
Lucie Green • Lab Girl: A Story of Trees, Science and Love by Hope Jahren – review
I write down what I observe in my notebooks. I do this for two reasons. The first is that Writing inculcates habits of precision a carefulness. The second is to preserve whatever knowledge I possess for you, the Sixteenth Person.
I am guilty of bad practice. Only one system of numbering is needed. Two introduces confusion, doubt, uncertainty, doubt and muddle. (And is aesthetically unpleasing.)
In accordance with the first system I have named two years 2011 and 2012. This strikes me as deeply pedestrian what happened two thousand years ago which made me think that year a good starting point. According to the years names like 'The Year I named the Constellations' and 'The Year I counted and named the Dead each year a character of its own. This is the system I shall use going forward
Priya Parker Gatherings.
I struggle to recall the name Encounterism.
Lonelines
because to some people it looks like a big empty space with nothing in it, but for us, it’s a really important place filled with wildlife and lovely, wonderful communities, and we wanted to protect them.’ She’d appealed to the critical difference between ‘space’ and ‘place’ – one a malleable territory largely Irreplaceable: The fight to save our
... See more
For the first day or two I felt stunned, overwhelmed. I could only apprehend my felicity; I was too confused to taste it sincerely. I wandered about, thinking I was happy, and knowing that I was not. I was in the condition of a prisoner in the old Bastile, suddenly let loose after a forty years' confinement. I could scarce trust myself with myself. It was like passing out of Time into Eternity—for it is a sort of Eternity for a man to have his Time all to himself. It seemed to me that I had more time on my hands than I could ever manage. From a poor man, poor in Time, I was suddenly lifted up into a vast revenue; I could see no end of my possessions; I wanted some steward, or judicious bailiff, to manage my estates in Time for me. From “The Superannuated Man” 1823
