In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviews 179 The Editors Essay Review Some of the most impressive western books produced in the past century and a half (beginning with The Journals of Lewis and Clark) have been various types of nature writing, and the current books I am reviewing here ably carry on that tradition. Western nature writing from the first has had strong ties with the American past: Puritan, Deistic, Romantic, and deter­ ministic views of nature are especially recognizable in western poetry and fiction as well as in essays. Jefferson, the Deistic natural philosopher who wrote some of the best nature essays of the eighteenth century in his Notes on Virginia, for example, set the tone and dimensions of the Journal by his detailed instructions to Lewis and Clark on the kinds of natural phenomena they were to observe and describe. Emerson and especially Thoreau have had a pervasive influence: many of their attitudes toward man and nature and their developmental techniques have effectively been adapted by western nature writers from Muir to Krutch. The Mountain of My Fear and On the Loose, though they effectively record essentially different kinds of experiences with nature, are written by young college students in their twenties. No doubt these books will prove to have a special appeal to young people, but they are exhilarating reading for oldsters as well— who, incidentally, may also find in them reassurances that seriousness and sensitivity, courage and commitment are not lost among the younger generation. Each book in its way maturely senses that triumph and tragedy are part of life. The Mountain of My Fear. By David Roberts. (New York: The Vanguard Press, Inc., 1968. 157 pages, map, photographs, glossary, appendices, $5.95.) On the Loose. By Terry and Renny Russell. (San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1967. 122 pages, color photographs, $6.95.) Mr. Roberts, a native Coloradoan, has written a great book about his ascent with three of his Harvard friends—Matt Hale, Don Jensen, and Ed Bernd— of the western face of Mt. Huntington, Alaska, in 1965. “The moun­ tain had been there a long time,” he begins, though he had seen it first from the summit of Mt. McKinley only in 1963. Their fascination with the challenge 180 Western American Literature of the unconquered mountain gradually grew into a compulsion to climb it that subdued irrational fears, a phenomenon which Mallory and others have pondered: the answer implied in the question, “Have we vanquished an enemy?” After months of preparation and the long drive to Alaska, they were landed by a bush pilot on a 9,000 foot glacier at the base of their mountain. The physical experience alone on the spectacularly beautiful and in­ credibly hazardous mountain is the most tense and thrilling adventure I have read about in many years. Overcoming natural barriers such as the Nose— a great overhanging ledge of rock— weeks of delay from storms shut in a snow cave and tents, they finally worked in relay teams in fifty-six pitches to the summit: there “The afternoon sun gleamed on the mountains around them as they sat, drunk with the excitement of height, looking over the wilderness below them.” Their moments of exultation there on the top of their mountain, how­ ever, had been dearly bought in mental and emotional stresses. The snow cave during the long enforced delays had “housed four men’s fears and hopes;” yet irritability, gloom, and fears— intensified even by dreams of mountain perils— subside before their commitment: “The best moments lurk in tension just before success.” But sudden bad weather made the “nightmarish descent,” more grueling even than reaching the summit, “a ghostly walk in the sky.” In this section the book reaches an almost unbearable tension when Mr. Roberts and his partner slip and fall, tearing loose their anchor rope and are saved by their rope’s chance catching on a rock no larger than a finger. Finally, with but one more tough pitch to descend, Ed inexplicably falls backward over a 4,000 foot precipice into a humanly inaccessible canyon, there ultimately to become assimilated with the glacier. The mystery and shock of Ed’s death finally settle into a dull feeling of loss. Mr...

pdf

Share