No idea how I found this book (probably grabbed it from my Dad’s pile of read books) but it was a fun adventure read.

(tags: family adventure western montana historical-fiction american-west )

I think I found this by way of ChatGPT recommendations based on other mountaineering / outdoor books I’ve read… it was a slog, not sure why I finished it other than I feel bad giving up on books. Wouldn’t recommend. Quotes:

• Page 245: "My foot slips on a narrow ledge: in that split second, as needles of fear pierce heart and temples, eternity intersects with present time. Thought and action are not different, and stone, air, ice, sun, fear, and self are one. What is exhilarating is to extend this acute awareness into ordinary moments, in the moment-by-moment experiencing of the lammergeier and the wolf, which, finding themselves at the center of things, have no need for any secret of true being. In this very breath that we take now lies the secret that all great teachers try to tell us, what one lama refers to as "the precision and openness and intelligence of the present." The purpose of meditation practice is not enlightenment; it is to pay attention even at unextraordinary times, to be of the present, nothing-but-the-present, to bear this mindfulness of now into each event of ordinary life. To be anywhere else is "to paint eyeballs on chaos." When I watch blue sheep, I must watch blue sheep, not be thinking about sex, danger, or the present, for this present-even while I think of it-is gone."

(tags: mountaineering adventure wildlife meditation non-fiction quest nature-writing )