11 Books of Real Life Challenge & Adventure for Reading on Cold Winter Evenings

Adventure.

In our collective minds we pretty much all have similar visions…Admiral Byrd toughing it out across frozen tundra, climbers risking life and limb to summit the highest peaks, and colonial Europeans exploring deepest Africa. In our comfortable, real world, we think of through-hikers on the well-traveled Appalachian Trail, rafting down the Colorado River with a guided tour, and other, more tangible adventures that involve zip lines and scuba diving. All of these are their own wonderful adventures that are available to most of us who are moderately fit and healthy.

The root word in “adventure” is Latin and means “an arrival.” We typically experience adventure as a “going  out” more than an arrival, but we do tend to arrive at knowing ourselves better through the experiences found in adventuring. Adventure at any level that challenges our comfort zones and stretches us mentally, emotionally, and physically will provide us with a story (or more) to share from our experiences and confirm to our own selves that we are really living our life full on. While we generally choose our adventures in this modern era, there are times when adventure is thrust upon unsuspecting souls and calls us up and out to amazing feats of courage, endurance, and survival.

So, while cold Winter evenings contrive to turn us more into armchair voyeurs than hardy adventurers, here are my current picks for some awe-inspiring reading that will inspire your own personal fortitude. Many of these I have read, and a few are on my list to read. Please share your own choices with Cross Adventuring!

1.  Annapurna by Maurice Herzog (1952)

“In 1950, when no mountain taller than 8,000 meters had ever been climbed, Maurice Herzog led an expedition of French climbers to the summit of an 8,075-meter (26,493-foot) Himalayan peak called Annapurna. The route up Annapurna had never been charted, and Herzog and his team had to locate the mountain using crude maps, pick out a possible line of ascent, and go for the summit. Annapurna is the unforgettable account of this heroic climb and its harrowing aftermath, including a nightmare descent while suffering from frostbite and snow blindness. Herzog’s masterful narrative is one of the great mountain-adventure stories of all time.”

2.  West With the Night by Beryl Markham (1942)

I have been fascinated with Beryl Markham for more than 30 years.  “Beryl Markham’s West with the Night is a true classic, a book that deserves the same acclaim and readership as the work of her contemporaries Ernest Hemingway, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and Isak Dinesen.
If the first responsibility of a memoirist is to lead a life worth writing about, Markham succeeded beyond all measure. Born Beryl Clutterbuck in the middle of England, she and her father moved to Kenya when she was a girl, and she grew up with a zebra for a pet; horses for friends; baboons, lions, and gazelles for neighbors. She made money by scouting elephants from a tiny plane. And she would spend most of the rest of her life in East Africa as an adventurer, a racehorse trainer, and an aviatrix―she became the first person to fly nonstop from Europe to America, the first woman to fly solo east to west across the Atlantic. Hers was indisputably a life full of adventure and beauty.
And then there is the writing. When Hemingway read Markham’s book, he wrote to his editor, Maxwell Perkins: “She has written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer . . . [She] can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers . . . It is really a bloody wonderful book.””

3.  Roughing It by Mark Twain (1872)

You can’t help but adore this man’s wit!  From an Amazon reviewer…”The genius of Mark Twain is that his work is still enjoyable, and funny, to this day. This book, originally published in 1871, is Twain’s account of his journey from Missouri to Hawaii (called the Sandwich Islands in his day). He tells story after story of his adventures along the way, starting with the stagecoach ride on the Overland Stage Line to Carson City, Nevada, around 1861, and then telling of his stay in Nevada, then California, then his visit to Hawaii. The stories are informative, humorous, and all-around entertaining. He lampoons everybody he can–nobody is safe–…even himself on more than one occasion. Sometimes his stories are so outrageous that you wonder how much is true and how much is embellishment, or just outright fiction. Even he understands this by telling the reader on occasion that he has not made up a particular story, to demonstrate that truth is often stranger than fiction, but also to imply that he has taken liberties in other places in the book.”

4. Travels in West Africa by Mary Kingsley (1892)

No tender Victorian violet, Mary Kingsley’s story is enthralling. “Until 1893, Mary Kingsley led a secluded life in Victorian England. But at age 30, defying every convention of womanhood of the time, she left England for West Africa to collect botanical specimens for a book left unfinished by her father at his death. Traveling through western and equatorial Africa and becoming the first European to enter some parts of Gabon, Kingsley’ s story–as an explorer and as a woman–would become an enduring tale of adventure, ranking 18th on “Adventure magazine’ s list of the top 100 adventure books.”

5. Seven Years in Tibet by Heinrich Harrer (1952)

You may have enjoyed the excellent 1997 movie about this book starring Brad Pitt as much as I did. I did some research after watching the movie and discovered that Heinrich and the Dalai Lama maintained their friendship throughout Heinrich’s life until he died at age 93 in 2006.  You can read the Dalai Lama’s official press release here.  “Originally published in 1953, this adventure classic recounts Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer’s 1943 escape from a British internment camp in India, his daring trek across the Himalayas, and his happy sojourn in Tibet, then, as now, a remote land little visited by foreigners. Warmly welcomed, he eventually became tutor to the Dalai Lama, teenaged god-king of the theocratic nation. The author’s vivid descriptions of Tibetan rites and customs capture its unique traditions before the Chinese invasion in 1950, which prompted Harrer’s departure. A 1996 epilogue details the genocidal havoc wrought over the past half-century.”

6. A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabelle L. Bird (1879)

This sounds like a wonderful read, and it is FREE on Kindle right now! “In 1854, at the age of twenty-two, Isabella Bird left England and began traveling as a cure for her ill health. Over the years she explored Asia, the Sandwich Islands, Hawaii, and both the Eastern and Western United States. A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains contains letters written to her sister during her six-month journey through the Colorado Rockies in 1873. Traveling alone, usually on horseback, often with no clear idea of where she will spend the night in what is mostly uninhabited wilderness, she covers over a thousand miles, most of it during the winter months. A well-educated woman who had known a comfortable life, she thinks nothing of herding cattle at a hard gallop, falling through ice, getting lost in snowstorms, and living in a cabin where the temperatures are well below zero and her ink freezes even as she writes. She befriends desperados and climbs 14,000 foot mountains, ready for any adventure that allows her to see the unparalleled beauty of nature. Her rare complaints have more to do with having to ride side-saddle while in town than with the conditions she faces. An awe-inspiring woman, she is also a talented writer who brings to life Colorado of more than one hundred years ago, when today’s big cities were only a small collection of frame houses, and while and beautiful areas were still largely untouched.”

7. Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen (1937)

The movie was so lush and wonderful that I was inspired to read the book soon after it was released. “From 1914 to 1931, Danish aristocrat Baroness Karen Blixen owned and operated a coffee plantation in Kenya. After the plantation failed, she returned to Europe and began to write under the pen name Isak Dinesen. Out of Africa reads like a collection of stories in which she adheres to no strict chronology, gives no explanation of the facts of her life, and apologizes for nothing. First published in 1937, Out of Africa is not free of the colonial or racist attitudes of its time; yet, within that context, Isak Dinesen is an enlightened observer and participant as she describes the experience of British East Africa before World War II. She portrays in rich detail the vast land around her, alive with strange and wonderful human populations; the thrilling terror of a nocturnal lion hunt; a shooting accident among the Africans on her farm and its repercussions; raising and freeing an orphaned antelope fawn; getting to know the Africans and the colonial adventurers who found their way into her life. “If I know a song of Africa,” she writes, “of the Giraffe, and the African new moon lying on her back, of the ploughs in the fields, and the sweaty faces of the coffee-pickers, does Africa know a song of me?” Out of Africa is that song.”

8. Through the Brazilian Wilderness by Theodore Roosevelt (1914)

I remember being so surprised when I first learned about Teddy R’s treks through South America. Somewhere in my schooling that bit of fascinating information had been left out! There is so much we don’t know until we open our eyes and do a little more digging beyond the standard reading lists. “Roosevelt’s popular book Through the Brazilian Wilderness describes his expedition into the Brazilian jungle in 1913 as a member of the Roosevelt-Rondon Scientific Expedition co-named after its leader, Brazilian explorer Cândido Rondon. The book describes all of the scientific discovery, scenic tropical vistas and exotic flora, fauna and wild life experienced on the expedition, as well as the exciting human dramas which occurred during the expedition.”

9. Adventures in the Wilderness by William H.H. Murray (1869)

This book is a new one to me, and since it is available for .99 on Kindle, I think it will be a terrific read. “William Henry Harrison Murray (1840–1904), also known as Adirondack Murray, was a clergyman and author of an influential series of articles and books which popularized the Adirondacks; he became known as the father of the Outdoor Movement. Born in Guilford, Connecticut, he graduated from Yale in 1862 and then served as a minister in Greenwich, Connecticut and Meriden, Connecticut. He also served as pastor of Park Street Church in Boston from 1868 to 1874. He also delivered Sunday evening lectures about the Adirondacks in a Boston music-hall that proved highly popular, and he published a series of articles based on the lectures in a Meriden newspaper. In 1869, they were published as a book, Adventures in the Wilderness; or, Camp-Life in the Adirondacks. The literary tone of the book made it extremely successful; it went through eight printings in its first year. Murray promoted New York’s north woods as health-giving and spirit-enhancing, claiming that the rustic nobility typical of Adirondack woodsmen came from their intimacy with wilderness. Although the book was to become one of the most influential books in the conservation movement of the 19th century, paradoxically, within five years it led to the building of over 200 “Great Camps” in the Adirondacks; “Murray’s Fools” poured into the wilderness each weekend, packing specially scheduled railroad trains. The book is cited as changing common parlance to use “vacation” instead of the British “holiday” for people vacating their city homes.”

10. I Married Adventure by Osa Johnson (1940)

Take a moment and “google” Osa Johnson and take a look through the amazing photographs that she and her husband took during their adventures. “A CLASSIC MEMOIR OF TWO PIONEERING ADVENTURERS Before Joy Adamson went to Africa, before Margaret Mead sailed to Samoa, before Dian Fossey was even born, a Kansas teenager named Osa Leighty married Martin Johnson, a pioneering photographer just back from a ’round-the-world cruise with Jack London. Together the Johnsons flew and sailed to Borneo, to Kenya, and to the Congo, filming Simba and other popular nature movies with Martin behind the camera and Osa holding her rifle at the ready in case the scene’s big game star should turn hostile. This bestselling memoir retraces their careers in rich detail, with precisely observed descriptions and often heart-stopping anecdotes. Illustrated with scores of the dramatic photos that made the Johnsons famous, it’s a book sure to delight every lover of true adventure.”

11. Natural Born Heroes by Christopher McDougall (2015)

While this book doesn’t fit the description of typical adventure literature, I thoroughly enjoyed this story of adventure and the history in this book and believe that you will also very much enjoy it. “The best-selling author of Born to Run now travels to the Mediterranean, where he discovers that the secrets of ancient Greek heroes are still alive and well on the island of Crete, and ready to be unleashed in the muscles and minds of casual athletes and aspiring heroes everywhere.  After running an ultramarathon through the Copper Canyons of Mexico, Christopher McDougall finds his next great adventure on the razor-sharp mountains of Crete, where a band of Resistance fighters in World War II plotted the daring abduction of a German general from the heart of the Nazi occupation. How did a penniless artist, a young shepherd, and a playboy poet believe they could carry out such a remarkable feat of strength and endurance, smuggling the general past thousands of Nazi pursuers, with little more than their own wits and courage to guide them?

McDougall makes his way to the island to find the answer and retrace their steps, experiencing firsthand the extreme physical challenges the Resistance fighters and their local allies faced. On Crete, the birthplace of the classical Greek heroism that spawned the likes of Herakles and Odysseus, McDougall discovers the tools of the hero—natural movement, extraordinary endurance, and efficient nutrition. All of these skills, McDougall learns, are still practiced in far-flung pockets throughout the world today. More than a mystery of remarkable people and cunning schemes, Natural Born Heroes is a fascinating investigation into the lost art of the hero, taking us from the streets of London at midnight to the beaches of Brazil at dawn, from the mountains of Colorado to McDougall’s own backyard in Pennsylvania, all places where modern-day athletes are honing ancient skills so they’re ready for anything.  Just as Born to Run inspired readers to get off the treadmill, out of their shoes, and into the natural world, Natural Born Heroes will inspire them to leave the gym and take their fitness routine to nature—to climb, swim, skip, throw, and jump their way to their own heroic feats.”

Related Posts

• 

  How Long Does it Take Baxter the Bloodhound to Track and Locate a Missing Person?
  How Long Does it Take Baxter the Bloodhound to Track and Locate a Missing Person?
• 

  Forest Bathing “shinrin-yoku”
  Forest Bathing “shinrin-yoku”
• 

  Grab and Go! What foods should you take on your next adventure?
  Grab and Go! What foods should you take on your next adventure?
• 

  Chicks in the Sticks 2017
  Chicks in the Sticks 2017