Sometimes bad things happen to good people who don’t always make the right choices or are caught up by circumstances and tossed into life-threatening situations.
The pleasure boat sinks at sea, a snowrider breaks a leg while backcountry snowboarding, your group is caught in a natural disaster, a hiker is lost and disoriented in desert canyons, your car dies 30 miles up a logging road and it’s snowing, or the kayak flips and you’re wet, battered and many miles from civilization.
Now what?
If you had invested $20 for Alexander Stillwell’s “The Encyclopedia of Survival Techniques,” (Lyons Press) you’d have a fighting chance. Yes, there are survival books that are more detailed but this is one of the best for hitting the highlights of many situations, including urban survival.
“Cactus Eaters” ($15, Harper Perennial): The subtitle to Dan White’s book is “How I Lost My Mind — and Almost Found Myself — on the Pacific Crest Trail.” Dan and his girlfriend, Allison, inexperienced hikers by any definition, lurch from one crisis to another on a 2,650-mile trail that was not designed for neophytes. The story is self-deprecating, humorous, painful, wonderful, enjoyable and mixed with characters on and off the trail.
“American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau” ($40, Library of America): Writer and activist Bill McKibben brings together impassioned writers in more than 1,000 pages, starting with Henry David Thoreau and ending with a 2007 article by Rebecca Solnit, “The Thoreau Problem.”
McKibben’s piece is here, “The End of Nature,” as well as Jack Turner’s “The Song of the White Pelican” and the inspired inclusion of Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” and Marvin Gaye’s “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology).”
When we’re surrounded by scenery, our souvenir gene naturally turns to photography. Three books can help. “Digital Landscape Photography: Step by Step” ($18, Amherst Media) is a good basic book. Michelle Perkins makes the best of space allowed, offers tips as well as general advice, and reminds us that good photographs can happen close to home.
James Martin returns with “Digital Photography Outdoors” ($19, Mountaineers Books). He includes updated information on the latest changes in Photoshop (CS3), describes the latest equipment options and continues to offer advice on such mysteries as histograms, parallax and digital wallets in his more technical-than-artistic book.
Andy Rouse uses beautiful photographs to illustrate “Understanding RAW Photography” ($25, Photographers Institute Press), but make no mistake: this may be the best book out there to learn how to get the most from RAW files, unprocessed and uncompressed data generated by a digital camera, thus having more dynamic range and flexibility than a jpeg file.
Two sweet $17 nature books are ideal for children: Sylvan Dell’s “The Best Nest” and “Animals are Sleeping.” Doris Mueller’s and illustrator Sherry Neidigh’s “Nest,” for primary to third-graders, follows a magpie’s instructions on how to build a safe nest for birds of different species, most of whom are impatient and fly away to build on partial instructions before the class is over. Suzanne Slade’s and illustrator Gary Phillip’s “Sleeping” is for primary and first-grade children, with art and a few words showing children how 15 different animals sleep.
“1001 Fly Fishing Tips” ($20, Headwater Books). Some of the world’s experts offer their advice and shortcuts addressing everything from West Coast stripers to taking great fish photos.
Two other books worth reading: Mark Fenton’s “The Complete Guide to Walking for Health, Weight Loss and Fitness” ($25, Lyons Press) is a 52-week plan heavy on charts, illustrations and photographs. If you’re hiking the British Columbia coast and are driving there and want a better feel for the area beyond trail information, read Diane Eaton’s and Allison Eaton’s “Exploring the BC Coast by Car” ($25, Harbour) as well as a trails book on the area. It’s a user-friendly book that’s heavy on photographs and covers some park options.
Columnist Sharon Wootton can be reached at 360-468-3964 or www.songandword.com.
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