It stayed on my shelf for three quarters. To be exact, from 28. April to 20. December. Based on my notes and bookmarks, however, seven days is all it takes to finish the reading. The book per se is amazing. Macfarlane, son of Cambridgeshire, is a legitimate member of good writing. My concordance lies with him on both nature and on solitude and especially on our contemplation of those minutiae. He, as I found out earlier in May, is also fascinated by word etymology, which brought me immediately closer to this Briton. I’ve since followed him avidly and known for a while about his latest books The Lost Words and Undergrounds.
Not until I finished chapter 8 Everest did it come clear to me how the book dedicates itself to tell the history of European mountaineering, and eventually, to the glory trio battle of George Mallory. Unlike other mountain writings I’ve read, like Into Thin Air of Jon Krakauer, from whom I first learned about Mallory, Macfarlane has this very disposition of a Romantic literature fellow, who knows Shelley’s poetry well by heart and depicts snow and altitude with a touch of artistry. His words flow with ease.
Moments occur more than once when I sank into ponderation. But one particularly is strong, as I read: “In May of 1999, seventy-five years after he had disappeared, Mallory’s body was found by a search party”. I felt this electronic shock passing along both my upper arms, my neurons firing a second time together, retrieving the memory about Everest expeditions that consolidated in April as I was reading Krakauer. Intricacy.
Another mind orgasm happened in a manner of quantum gravitation. Right after finishing the book, I looked for some more natural literature and the like. One book popped up, revealed itself as Waterlog, by Roger Deakin. Thought it might be a nice switch between tastes from mountain to waters, but no version is available 🙁 Anyway, after dinner as I was browsing IG by the water refiller, Robert showed up without saying hello.
Apparently, he posted the pics one hour before I opened IG, exactly the same time as I was searching for Waterlog. Coincidentally that’s also when he found this lovely pair of ice skates once belonged to Deakin, the person connected us today. I feel love transporting through past and dust, through time and zone, reaching hand to me.