The White Ladder: Triumph and Tragedy at the Dawn of Mountaineering by Daniel Light | Book Review | Oneworld Publications

 

Perhaps even those only remotely interested in the history of mountaineering have heard the names of George Mallory and Andrew Irvine who (as the debate still carries on today) may or may not have been the first to reach the summit of Mount Everest, shortly before disappearing into the clouds and never seen alive again.

But what makes The White Ladder: Triumph and Tragedy at the Dawn of Mountaineering by Daniel Light thrilling is that it uses the fateful 1924 British expedition as its endpoint – something the narrative builds up to, starting from the very early days of mountaineering and giving a panoramic overview en route. As Light shows in vivid, involving detail, summiting wasn't always about glory and fame; in fact, mountaineering wasn't even always about summiting. The how and why of modern mountaineering turns out to be absolutely fascinating.

The White Ladder is a truly novel-like history. What especially fascinates me is how the initial interest in climbing mountains – purely scientific – evolved into sport, conquest and global power. From surveyors to naturalists, young aristocrats, rich protégés and even the odd occultist, the cast of mountain literature is as colourful as any novel, and Light gives an easy to follow chronological history of the evolution of high-altitude exploration. All the while, it is engrossing, written in a way that makes the reader feel like they are there with these great men (and even a woman), lighting pipes, breathing in the chill mountain air, eating Irish stew straight from the tin when the stove wouldn't light, 'slowly melting the lumps of white frozen grease in our mouths, and then swallowing them'.

Light doesn't just recount records, names and dates, but looks at key developments too, such as the gradual discovery of mountain sickness, the invention of crampons and using supplemental oxygen for the first time – small details that add colour and life to the cold upper reaches, and all in vivid, theatrical detail. I am so drawn into the book, in fact, that I don't want it to end: it truly allows me to live vicariously, with each chapter telling the story of a single person or team, and an expedition that moved the development of mountaineering forward, one way or another. Notably, I believe failed attempts actually outnumber successes, making it feel like a fuller, more realistic narrative.

It's a complete surprise to read about Fanny Workman Bullock, one of the most decorated Himalayan mountaineers – man or woman – of her time (though of course, the truth is that, as Light describes her, she was an 'ugly extension of British colonial rule' in attitude towards the locals, which may explain why she isn't as celebrated today as she might be). Equally, the eccentricities of late Victorian climbers are always a delight: from surviving on nothing but 'champagne and Danish butter', to Aleister Crowley arguing with Oscar Eckenstein about bringing his hefty poetry volumes to the top of K2 with him, because 'I would rather bear physical starvation than intellectual starvation'. 

Light doesn't shy away from sharing the often repulsive truths behind the glorified expeditions, including beatings, starvation, death and ugly gossip. But all that adds up to an intriguing history, one that pokes gentle fun at the white masculine heroism of the time, all the while giving credit where credit is due. It is thoroughly researched, very well written and highly recommended for anyone looking for an armchair escape into the cold peaks of the Himalayas. 

Wanderers: A History of Women Walking by Kerri Andrews | Book Review | Preface by Kathleen Jamie | Reaktion Books

 

[Review originally published on Bookmunch: View Post]

How many female writer-walkers can you name? We think of Dorothy Wordsworth (though we also instantly think of her brother); we think of Nan Shepherd (mostly thanks to her sudden popularity over the last few years); perhaps we think of Cheryl Strayed or Raynor Winn. But how can these women compare to the fame of the Lake Poets, the flâneurs, D. H. Lawrence, John Muir or Henry David Thoreau?

Wanderers: A History of Women Walking by Kerri Andrews (introduced by Kathleen Jamie) makes a strong case for remembering that there is a reason behind the history of walking coming to us from an overwhelmingly male perspective.

In this collection Andrews rounds up some of the most well-known (and some less well-known) writer-wanderer women who, for one reason or another, were passionate walkers throughout their lives. So much more than an anthology, each chapter is dedicated to a single woman and a meditation on the role that walking played in their lives. Through their walking habits (and what these habits inspired), Andrews paints vivid characters rather than presenting biographies, yet gives plenty of insight, and shows intimate knowledge of the backgrounds and output of her chosen examples.

The curated selection is colourful and exciting, and their reasons for walking varied. There are those we expect to be included, and those we get to know, perhaps for the first time. Elizabeth Carter, the whimsical vagrant, walked each day for inspiration and health, ideally also enjoying a good drench in a thunderstorm; Dorothy Wordsworth used walking as a way of ‘experiencing both her new-found independence and her new home’ after moving into Dove Cottage. Harriet Martineau, after a prolonged illness that confined her to a single room, rediscovers the joy of living in the act of walking, roaming the Lakes for ten glorious years and rivalling the Lake Poets as a writer-walker in her time. Virginia Woolf paces her novels into existence, while Anaïs Nin – diarist and writer – explores her sexual desires and creativity on the streets of Paris and New York.

What becomes clear from these essays is that walking can be a lifeline or a source of creativity; it can be a form of memory, and can transform a city or landscape into a vast spider web of lives lived in parallel.

Andrews also explores the limitations on women’s walking – not everyone is permitted, or is able to walk, and not freely in any case. Most women in this collection have some reason to fear, whether that’s judgement, assault, or household and family duties that husbands historically extricated themselves from. These women didn’t have the liberty to walk where and when they might have wanted and, arguably, women today often still don’t. With these essays, Andrews raises a rallying cry against giving up on a pastime that, as Rebecca Solnit writes, is a ‘portion of our humanity’.

Each chapter is bookended by a short piece by Andrews – some recounting personal experiences of walking, and some offering reflections on these extraordinary women. It’s a perfect balance, and the structure works very well in tying all the chapters together.

It’s not so much a history of walking as a historical tracing of a line, a trend often overlooked. It is a much-needed case to be made, and Wanderers sits proudly unique amongst the many walking anthologies that give a mostly male perspective.

Overall, Wanderers is more than history, more than anthology: with an excellent selection of case studies, it is a love letter to walking, and highlights time and again how this simple act can be true freedom.

Climbing Days by Dorothy Pilley | Introduced by Dan Richards | Book Review | Canongate

 

Ever since I read Climbing Days by Dan Richards, I have been intrigued by Dorothy Pilley. Dan's great-great-aunt was a pioneer mountaineer, and someone that the last few decades have somehow allowed to fade into some obscurity. Having finally had the chance to read her original account, Climbing Days - here republished in a stunning edition by Canongate, and introduced by Dan Richards - I am surprised and saddened that this book isn't one of the canons of British climbing literature.

But saddened no more! Here, again, is the book in all its glory, and what a surprising, delightful and exciting read it is. Tracing Dorothy's climbing journey from her very first forays in the UK all the way to her pioneering ascent of the north-north-west face of the Dent Blanche in Switzerland, this is a complete and satisfying climbing journey that takes all the great climbs in its stride. Equally though, it is tender escapism, inspiring dreams of distant mountains many of us will never see. Mountains of the mind, and all that. 

Climbing Days takes in the Lakes, Wales and the Isle of Skye - with Dorothy expressing equal amounts of awe as anyone doing the same today will experience - and then further to Switzerland, France and Spain for adventures in alpinism as her skills, confidence and social circles grow.

One must constantly remember (with both awe and horror), when reading this fine piece of mountaineering literature, that what we think of today as 'climbing' took a very different shape in the 1930s, when this book was first published. I often felt a thrill when remembering that when Dorothy says 'abseil', she means wrapping a rope around her thigh and shoulder and lowering herself just so. No Grigri, no belay or rappel device, just a rock with a rope slung around it to hopefully keep one safe. Equally, climbing looked rather different: there is no mention at all of harnesses, and though carabiners were coming into fashion around this time, they weren't widespread yet. Pitons - metal spikes to drive into the rock and use as a step or anchor - were more common, but falling, generally, still wasn't a safe option, just something hopefully avoided or mitigated mid-air. 

In the same vein, reading about rescue operations she occasionally took part in is fascinating. At the time, there was no official mountain rescue - just a handful of (hopefully) experienced climbers, who happened to be staying in a nearby hut, and were gracious enough to go looking for a missing colleague who hadn't returned. She shares tales on hut etiquette, rationing and packing (for example, how they slowly moved away from carrying heavy tins to spartan rations), and even her first close encounter with a crevasse. In a way, Climbing Days is a beautiful glimpse into the development of mountaineering and alpinism in the early twentieth century.

But then, so much more too: I am so pleasantly surprised by how funny Dorothy is. Considering Climbing Days was first published in 1935, it reads as easily as any modern climbing memoir, and her often tongue-in-cheek, self-mocking yet awe-filled rememberances fill the pages with life. Not always plain-sailing; sacrifices had to be made. 'I haunted second-hand bookshops for climbing literature,' she writes, 'going without a new hat or sacrificing lobster salad for a bun and coffee lunch.'

Lyrical, too; developed from her diaries that she kept throughout her entire life, Dorothy had plenty of material to draw on and develop into vivid descriptions of landscape and experience.

'After supper I went outside, wrapped in blankets, to watch the moonlight moulding the backs of a sea of clouds in the valley and cutting the upper glacial world into heraldic simplicity of sable and silver.'

The two Climbing Days - that of Dorothy Pilley and that of Dan Richards - are a brilliant match, and if any of this appeals to you, I would advise reading them both. The order doesn't matter, though Dan's book is perhaps a great contextual introduction to Dorothy's work. I am just glad that, to my ever-growing library of badass, inspiring female climbers' memoirs, I can now add this wonderful account.

 

Cairn by Kathleen Jamie | Book Review | Sort of Books | Author of Findings, Sightlines and Surfacing

 

Cairn by Kathleen Jamie

What a delight to be reading Kathleen Jamie again. Her return with her new book, Cairn, is masterful – in this new collection of short pieces and poems, she exceeds herself, the format enabling her to chisel each piece to perfection until what is left of a rough stone (though beautiful to begin with) is its shimmering centre. She brings all of her grace and poetic mastery to this collection, one that deserves reading and rereading often.

The introduction sets the scene with a somewhat bittersweet tone and self-mocking note, gently making fun of Kathleen's own earnestness of youth – now writing to us from the other side of a threshold of age, where one becomes 'more hander-on of the world than its inheritor'. How lucky for us to have honest notes from someone who observes and sends letters, to let us know what it's like. This handing over, this changing of the guards runs through the book like an undercurrent, through climate protests and summit trips. Her fear for the future, and future generations is palpable throughout. But it is also a sort of taking us by the hand, pulling us forward, gently into action.

Her short-form writing is beautiful, like a collection of trinkets on one's windowsill, and on my first read I already read everything twice. In fact, I pick up other books to intentionally slow my pace. I don't want to read it all at once, and I know it's not enough, anyway; I return to reread it all, not in order this time, in and out of sentiments and snapshots of images beautifully conjured in such few words. 

A sense of mourning lingers in these fragments, farewells to the departed and especially to one's young self. Kathleen is such a wonderful weaver, connecting with ease the muddy hillside springs ('if even they had run dry, what then?') to an all-encompassing sense of loneliness, 'like a five years bairn again, blythly venturing toward the edge of the known, but with no-one left alive to call me home.' 

She mourns and fears for the future and the planet, and writes tender reminiscences of an age where this mourning didn't yet penetrate our every waking thought. 'Envy us, infants in an undisfeatured world.' In phone wires and raindrops, she sees our entire past and future, and this is what makes her writing so exceptional. Her perspective, too; in 'Peregrines', she becomes the predator, her eyes zooming into the small detail and zooming out again, experiencing being the one with the threatening aura. In 'The Mirror', from a fallen mirror, to a Pictish stone, to a lakeside, back to the mirror again in one fell swoop, somehow changed. 

Every description is worth cherishing, and I enjoy them immensely for their singularity, their rejection of sentimentality: 'The flash of gold is the same blaze of winter sunset mirrored in a puddle. The flare and die, the feathering dark.' And, often, a wry smile, an aside firmly rooting us back in reality: 'Suddenly we're stood watching a big fat metaphor.' Her tone of darkness and humour, so well intertwined, is what makes me love her even more. She raps her own knuckles. The truth is, no one out there writes quite like this.

There are pieces of poetry too, which add to the feeling of the cairn: the placing of stones of various shapes and sizes, on our way to somewhere. They complete the collection that reflects Kathleen deeply, personally.

This book feels as much a piece of literary mastery as a plea or prayer or warning. Kathleen doesn't want to settle comfortably in beauty. A piece about a simple flint, another about avian influenza makes me well up. 'What use is the summer sunlight, if it can't gleam on a gannet's back?'

'We can't stand around like innocents, slightly unsettled, scrolling on, wishing things were "back to normal"', she warns. So, perhaps, Cairn is a marker of a path, an invitation to follow on – or even just to set out and peek around the next bend.