Book: To a Mountain in Tibet by Colin Thubron

The mountain is Mt. Kailas. It is 22,000 feet high, and has never been climbed. It is in western Tibet just east of India and just north of Nepal. If one looks on a map, it is where the borders of these three countries converge. Mt. Kailas is "sacred to one-fifth of humankind...both Buddhists and Hindu." To not have known this amazing fact is humbling. Complicating his trek are concerns about whether the Chinese will allow them into Tibet. Mr. Thubron is a strong and sturdy traveler. While he does hire a couple of guides and carriers, he makes the journey on foot.

All through my reading of this book and increasingly so as both the book and the actual trek progressed, I was struck with how un-American it was, not in a bad way, but in a way that brought into focus another culture and people who live without technology, roads, electricity, medical care, comfort as we define comfort, ease of mobility.... Many books do this, but NOTHING seemed familiar to me, and the author seemed not bothered with the lack of modernity, which to my mind is the mark of a true wanderer. He accepted this world and was respectful of it. He struggles to understand and learn about the mystery of Mt. Kailas and why it has become symbolic and sacred.

He walks through a world of wild beauty, of dangerous beauty, often harsh, with raging rivers and precipitous trails on talus slopes, enduring cold, wind, snow and oxygen depletion, through a landscape of prayer flags and prayer wheels and other pilgrims. He is intrepid and continues with his goal of walking around Mt. Kailas; this circling journey is a kora. He seeks a connection with all that has happened before in this place and also with his personal familial history. His sister died on a mountain when she was young; his aged mother recently has died.

"...for long minutes I am slumped on rocks, gasping, my legs gone...Then my trekking pole snaps in the shale. I think: if things are like this at 11,000 feet, how will they be over 18,500, where I am going?...Suddenly...I feel the air too thin to sustain me. Nothing remains but this thread of oxygen It is not enough. Barely enough. Faint, I am lying on stones. The air is receding from me, everything depleted. My breath is rasping sobs."

He learns from those along the way, from the monks, the other pilgrims, from the villagers and from his sherpas. He recalls what he has read and recounts histories we are never taught, stories and myths of which we are not aware, and in this narrative I learned of a mountain whose name I never had heard before.

The book is part adventure, part history, part world religion, part anthropology and geography, part modern geopolitics....

"They are all Bhotias and local Tibetans now, swarthy, wild-faced men whose backs are sheathed in fleeces and yak pelts and foreheads rumpled by headbands to steady their toppling loads."

As I said, this book was filled with new images and stories, the physical adventure vicariously enjoyed, offering glimpses into other realities, never a bad thing for any of us.

Book: Prairie Spring by Pete Dunne

Or, since most books I read have subtitles, A Journey Into the Heart of a Season.

Pete Dunne, a premier birder, traveled with his photographer wife, Linda, to the western prairies for several weeks in the spring. This is a rather small book, with some photographs, but with enough to color in this somewhat forgotten part of our country. Pete writes about Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico, South Dakota and Montana...with observations on weather, history, botany, sociology, geography, the mammals of the prairies, large and small, and, of course, bird finding and watching. His commentary is not pedantic; he never takes himself too seriously and finds humor in most situations. It was a good book to read while crossing the prairies myself at the end of May, albeit further north. This land is defined by weather patterns, grasses, magnificent skies, water-filled potholes, rivers, creeks, sunshine, county roads, a few major highways, small towns, ranches and farms, aridity in the more western states and only occasional trees.

If the place name Pawnee National Grassland does not pique your interest at all, then you can probably skip reading this book, but if something trips in your heart and soul when reading those words, I think you'll like it.

I refer often to another book Pete Dunne wrote: Essential Field Guide Companion in which he describes most of the birds in the United States. His descriptions often make me smile, as when he describes the snowy owl as a looking like "a small, soot-flecked, partially melted snowman with bright yellow eyes." For me, I can usually confirm a tentative identification after reading his notes on a particular bird.

A couple of examples of how he writes:

"I thought I'd try to calculate how many primroses stood in front of me. Using an average of 350 blossoms per 100 square feet, figuring that to the far hilltop I was looking at an area about three quarters of a square mile, I came up with approximately 73,180,800 flowers."

"A buffalo (American for bison) is a front-heavy ungulate with a head too large and hips too small to win any ribbons at the local county fair stock show."

He is the Director of the Cape May Bird Observatory in New Jersey.