Complete Wilderness Training Book Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Are you looking to buy Complete Wilderness Training Book? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on Complete Wilderness Training Book. Check out the link below:

>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers

Complete Wilderness Training Book ReviewThis is a very readable and enjoyable book, but I found it lacking in some respects. It presents some very good information. Its organization is readable, though not always as logical as it could be; often the captions repeat information found in the main text. Lack of space prevents the book from having large databases of edible plants, venomous animals, etc., so it only displays photos of a few; this seems rather random and unhelpful, especially since edible plants really should be identified by more than the memory of a single photograph. A better method would be to have smaller, more precise illustrations and descriptions of each plant, focusing on those that are commonest, most easily identifiable, and best sources of bulk food. (By the way, I have reason to believe that the book's description of the mock strawberry, or _Duchesnea_, as a deathly poisonous berry is an incorrect piece of folklore; _Duchesnea_ isn't even the complete species name.) Sometimes the book just wastes space on insignificant topics -- like mushrooms, which are a bit dangerous and not of great nutritional value; how to make a Jell-O dessert out of carrageen seaweed (really!); and various animals and their survival adaptions. Occasionally I disagree with the author's chosen method of doing something, or happen to know that there are other ways he doesn't mention. (He could have included the debris hut in his section on shelter, and shown specifically how to twist fibers into cord.) The photos and illustrations are excellent, but sometimes show more than they need to.
I've spent a lot of space complaining about the book's shortcomings, but let me add that when I first got this book, towards the beginning of my interest in survival, I thoroughly enjoyed paging through it and learned quite a bit. It's good for beginners, who will be able to browse the book open-mindedly and learn many survival tips at their leisure.Complete Wilderness Training Book Overview

Want to learn more information about Complete Wilderness Training Book?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now

Read More...

Everett Ruess: A Vagabond for Beauty Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Are you looking to buy Everett Ruess: A Vagabond for Beauty? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on Everett Ruess: A Vagabond for Beauty. Check out the link below:

>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers

Everett Ruess: A Vagabond for Beauty ReviewThis is a hard book to sum up in a few words. Fascinating and compelling, yes; heartbreaking, often; hair-raising sometimes; exasperating, occasionally. Mostly, it is a vivid reminder of what it is to be still very young, naive, and adventuresome. It's also a book that's very hard to put down.
The reader, of course, knows from the start that Everett Ruess disappears at the age of 21 while on a walkabout somewhere near the Colorado River, in the remote 1930s wilderness of southern Utah. Gifted, bright, and almost painfully sensitive, he writes letters home that are sweetly poignant, thoughtful, opinionated, and rapturously descriptive of the natural environment he loves. Starting at the age of 16, while still a high school student in Hollywood, California, he journeys to Carmel, Arizona, and the Sierras. Leaving UCLA after one unhappy semester, he returns to the Four Corners region of Arizona and drifts northward into Utah where he follows the Escalante down to the Colorado and then vanishes.
A lover of classical music, a reader of books, poet, writer, water colorist, and block print maker, he considers himself very much a misfit in a world of conformity, where people live lives of quiet desperation, pursuing material goals that make them unhappy and unfulfilled. Torn between his desire for companionship and his love of wilderness solitude, he appreciates warm and welcoming company wherever he happens upon it, and seeks it out when he can, sometimes introducing himself to established artists, such as photographers Edward Weston and Ansel Adams. During visits to the home of painter Maynard Dixon, in San Francisco, he is befriended and photographed by Dixon's wife, Dorothea Lange. One of these photographs eventually appears in a missing persons report in a publication of the Los Angeles Police Department.
It's easy to go on and on about this book. The letters provide such a rich psychological portrait of this young man, full of interesting contradictions and curious prophecies of his eventual fate. Meanwhile, there is the mystery of his disappearance and the various theories and speculation about what may have happened to him, which are also included by the book's author.
I am happy to recommend this book to anyone interested in the West, stories about coming of age and self-reliance, rhapsodic descriptions of nature, personal adventures, the desert, Native Americans, and unsolved mysteries. As companion volumes, I'd also suggest Edward Abbey's "Desert Solitaire" and Eliot Porter's excellent collection of photographs, "The Place No One Knew: Glen Canyon on the Colorado."Everett Ruess: A Vagabond for Beauty Overview

Want to learn more information about Everett Ruess: A Vagabond for Beauty?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now

Read More...