26/02/19: Lauren Elder with Shirley Streshinsky – And I Alone Survived (1978)

Back cover: “Lauren Elder set out in a light aircraft in company with the pilot and his girlfriend. It was going to be a joyride, sightseeing over the mountainous splendour of the Sierra Nevada range. 

The Cessna hit the mountain fifteen feet from the crest. The joyride had turned into a nightmare. 

After a night of sub-zero temperatures Lauren was the only one of the three left alive.

She faced the terrifying prospect of climbing down to safety, wearing only a jacket and skirt and fashionable boots, down 8,000 feet of fearsome, precipitous mountain to the desert below...”

I love that reference to “fashionable boots”...

The opening pages are written like a racy novel, which added a certain distance for me: somehow it wasn’t very engaging. From the moment the plane hits the mountain ridge, the book becomes hugely compelling. After a frozen night huddled in the wreckage with no underwear and crammed in a tiny space with the one other survivor, she finds herself alone as her second companion dies from injuries and exposure. Sensing rescue was unlikely she begins the long climb down the snowy mountain, despite serious wounds and the onset of hallucinations. The account of her long trek to safety is interspersed with details of the rescue mission launched by her boyfriend.

The most fascinating sections of the book involve her describing how she felt during the ordeal: “From the moment I had lowered myself over the side of the crest early that morning I had been aware of a feeling of pure physical strength. But it was really more than that. It was strength tempered by balance, a kind of power that seemed to spring from some untapped well. It was as if I had been granted an unlimited supply of energy, and I was amazed and confounded by it.”

This energy – a sense of purpose and defiance – saves her life: “I had known the feeling before. I had it sometimes when I was surfing. I would catch a big wave and ride it on and on, sensing that I was part of the sea. I didn’t have to think or even make an effort. We just flowed together, my body responding without any command; And it happened to me at other times – the best times when I was jumping a horse. Then everything was so finely balanced that I knew I could do no wrong, that whatever move we made together was right. But I could not believe I that I had this feeling on a sheer granite cliff in a mountain wilderness.” 

She also comes to terms with death as being “neither dramatic nor even alarming”, simply something that “is”. It's impressive how wise and mature she is, and her will to live is inspiring: “I had also discovered, that spring day, that there is little that cannot be endured. Much of the time I had felt as if I’d been possessed of a special grace. That is all I could think to call it, grace. It was as if a transcendent power had been loosed in me as I made my way down that mountain. At times during the day I’d been filled with a peculiar sense of well-being, of elation. I had fallen out of the sky, had in the most primeval sense been lost in the wilderness, and it had not overwhelmed me. It had been, even, exhilarating.”

22/02/19: Deborah Levy – The Cost of Living (2018)

“The writing life is mostly about stamina. To get to the finishing line requires the writing to become more interesting than everyday life...”

This little hardback was free from the Totteridge & Whetstone book exchange – the wonderful “take one, leave one” scheme run from the waiting room on the station platform.

It’s a short, philosophical memoir about writing, the break-up of her marriage and the death of her mother. Levy writes beautifully, in clear, concise sentences. The structure seems abstract – rambling even – but then she loops back to certain individuals, themes and ideas and you realise how cleverly constructed it is.

A work of philosophy and gentle wit, she flits between playful and profound with graceful ease.

19/02/19: Karl Pilkington – An Idiot Abroad: The Travel Diaries of Karl Pilkington (2010)

The tie-in book of the first Sky TV series of the same name. Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant send their friend Karl to witness the Wonders of the World, and Karl – a man who dislikes travel and is well out of his “comfort zone” – responds to these alien experiences in his usual deadpan manner.

Written down, it’s considerably less funny. You can still enjoy Karl’s unique slant on things, but it seems one-dimensional without hearing his voice (so familiar from podcasts and radio shows) and seeing his face. Another disappointment is that the little drawings are not by Karl, but by an illustrator and made to look as if they are Pilkington doodles. Despite some funny sentences, the whole book has a child-like quality that makes it oddly unsatisfying.

It’s undoubtedly lightweight, but there’s still a certain pleasure to be had in reading about these adventures – however flimsy. Despite his many prejudices, Karl mostly emerges as a kind and likeable character. You wouldn’t necessarily want to travel with him, though.

18/02/19: Deborah Scaling Kiley and Meg Noonan – Albatross: The True Story of a Woman’s Survival at Sea (1994)

“I opened my eyes and felt the sting of salt water. I waited for my vision to clear. When it did, my stomach contracted. A cold sword of fear stabbed through me. I didn’t believe what I was seeing. I didn’t want to believe it. Now I knew what had been bumping Mark’s legs. Sharks. There were sharks everywhere. Dozens, no, hundreds of them – as far as I could see. Some were so close I could see the membrane hooding their lifeless, clouded eyes. Others were just slow-moving angular shadows spiralling into the depths.”

Another raft-survival memoir, which I was inspired to read following the accounts of Steven Callahan and Maurice and Maralyn Bailey. The blurb on the dust jacket pretty much tells you everything:

“From the moment Debbie Scaling left Southwest Harbour in Maine she had misgivings about both the crew and the 58-foot Boothbay Challenger yacht. Yet, although she was an experienced sailor, she ignored her instincts and embarked on the voyage to Florida to deliver the boat – the aptly named Trashman – to its owner. They never made it.

Halfway through their voyage, the Trashman sank in a ferocious storm. Debbie and her four crew-mates were left on a tiny rubber dinghy in the middle of a raging ocean. They spent the first night in the water, under the upside-down inflatable, trying to keep warm. In the morning they discovered the water was infested with sharks. Back in the dinghy they covered themselves with seaweed for warmth – but were bitten by the creatures in it. They were attacked by birds, developed hideous sores, and with no food, no water, and inadequate clothing they began to hallucinate. Driven beyond endurance, two of the crew drank seawater and, little by little, went mad. With the others too weak to stop them they swam off and didn’t survive. The skipper’s girlfriend also died – of exposure and gangrene.

After days of this living nightmare, and resigned to their fate at the mercy of the sea Debbie and her only surviving crewmate, Brad, were rescued by a Russian ship.”

It’s a fairly harrowing read, not least because the incompetent “crew” (including two men with drink problems) are constantly at each other’s throats. There’s little unity, making a scary situation even more terrifying: “Then Meg was shouting at John again and John was shouting back and Mark was ranting and I felt myself drowning in the sound of their voices, the whining, the shouting, the crying, the complaining. Why couldn’t everyone just be quiet? I saw John kick Meg. He was doing it on purpose. She wailed and he kicked her again.”

The horror doesn’t end with the rescue. Deborah endures a decade of post-traumatic stress disorder and battles bulimia and depression as she struggles to comprehend what happened. She also files a lawsuit against the US coastguard, who she considers negligent. Inexplicably, the official reports claimed that the Trashman had arrived safely at its destination.

With marriage, motherhood, the writing of this book and a return to sailing she eventually starts to move on with her life. An extremely gripping story, it makes for a sobering read.

Postscript: it’s heartbreaking to learn that the tragedy continued. Debbie’s marriage ended. Her son John Coleman Kiley IV died by drowning in 2009, aged just 23. And Debbie herself died in 2012, aged 54.

“...the ocean us like a snarling dog,” she writes at one point; “it can sense when you are afraid.”

13/02/19: Stuart Stevens – Malaria Dreams: An African Adventure (1989)

“You would have to be out of your mind to go anywhere with Stuart Stevens, but when the travel is only mental, he is the perfect companion: brave, funny and ever-watchful” – Martin Amis

Amusing account of the author’s attempt to cross Africa by car, from Bangui in the Central African Republic to Algiers. His does this with his glamorous, remarkably laid-back companion Anne. Intriguingly, the exact nature of the pair’s relationship – not romantic – is never explained.

Their efforts are continually thwarted by local corruption, a lack of roads, failing equipment and poor living conditions. It’s to his great credit that Stevens finds so much humour in a situation that continually veers between maddening, desperate and scary.

According to the book blurb, Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Mali, all of which he drives through, are “bizarre places where the vestiges of colonial folly, idiosyncratic enterprise, bribery and endless, pointless bureaucracy are the stuff of life”. Indeed, the frustrations of bureaucracy are such that the actual road journey only begins halfway through the book – and even then not in his friend’s Land Rover, as planned, but in a completely different vehicle. The section detailing the Toyota Land Cruiser breaking down during their attempt to cross the Sahara is genuinely hair-raising. It had to be locked into third gear and then driven in a continuous session without stopping, whatever the terrain.

It’s a miracle that they survived to tell the tale.

05/02/19: Maurice and Maralyn Bailey – 117 Days Adrift (1974)

M and M hit a sperm whale and their boat sinks off the Galápagos Islands. They drift for nearly four months in their raft and dinghy, surviving on turtle meat and raw fish.

This book lacks the lucid poetry and existential insights of Steven Callahan’s Adrift: Seventy-Six Days Lost at Sea (1986). However, it does have a special charm of its own. Alternating between narrations of husband and wife, the presence of not just a second person but a spouse gives their account a special “domestic” dynamic. They keep each other going, whether it’s mutual support in killing sea creatures or – in the early days of the ordeal – reading out loud to each other and improvising games of dominoes and cards with paper to pass the time (“We spent many hours during the next few weeks playing whist”).

The rather matter-of-fact way its written means that the book is surprisingly low on drama. Some important details are almost glossed over: toilet arrangements are not mentioned until page 95.

“In some weird and detached way we found peace in our complete and compulsory isolation. We talked without the encumbrances of modern living; we explored the hidden depths of each other’s character, we threw away the trappings of so called civilization and reverted to a simple prehistoric way of life. We had our ‘lair’, the raft, and only emerged to hunt our food. Life was simple, but not secure.”

While they revert to a primitive state, it’s remarkable that there seems to have been very little tension between the couple: “We were now existing at a primeval level where the layers of civilization had been stripped away from us. We found our bodily functions unembarrassing and it was surprisingly easy to stay clean. We would wash in sea water, clean our teeth and comb our hair, and in my case, my beard. It was usually far too cold to sit out in the rain and we did not often take advantage of the frequent downpours for bathing.

They lose weight and suffer medical problems, but manage to fish and collect rainwater at such a rate that they mostly avoid serious physical and mental harm. They are eventually saved by a Korean fishing boat – the eighth ship they saw.

Appendices include thoughts on the design of the raft and dinghy, medical evaluation of the couple by Surgeon Captain John Duncan Walters and a list of all the boats that didn’t stop to save them.

01/02/19: Cheryl Strayed – Wild: A Journey from Lost to Found (2012)

“Foot speed was a profoundly different way of moving through the world than my normal modes of travel. Miles weren’t things that blazed dully past. They were long, intimate straggles of weeds and clumps of dirt, blades of grass and flowers that bent in the wind, trees that lumbered and screeched. They were the sound of my breath and my feet hitting the trail one step at a time and the click of my ski pole. The PCT had taught me what a mile was. I was humble before each and every one.”

When her mother dies and her personal life unravels (one-night stands, divorce, heroin), Cheryl Strayed decides to walk the PCT (Pacific Crest Trail) from Mohave, California, to the Bridge of the Gods on the border of Oregon and Washington. Even with sections of the route being missed, it ends up being a journey of 1,100 miles.

Along the way she evades rattlesnakes and bears, struggling through parched deserts and deep snow. She has excruciating foot pain and loses toenails, but meets kindly strangers, makes some hiking friends and starts to come to terms with her past.

It’s hugely readable. The film made in 2014 is a fairly faithful adaptation of this text, but suffers from condensing such a detailed narrative into a couple of hours and somehow seemed a more disturbing tale overall. It’s also harder for a film to show an emotional transformation, which is perhaps the real subject of Wild.

The book is far more varied in tone, with plenty of gentle humour amid the soul-searching and recollection. You end up admiring her spirit and determination. And if you like walking, as I do, it leaves you yearning to undertake your own epic journey.