A peripatetic, global explorer’s autobiographical musings, this gem is filled with his rambling thoughts about the meaning of the life he has lived and the sometimes imagined history of the remote outposts he visits and studies. I am in awe of his encyclopedic knowledge ranging from anthropology, history, archaeology, geology, folklore, classical literature, philosophy, botany and even ornithology. He combines this with rare wisdom seldom found in the erudite world of such highly educated prolific writers. His long digressions are delivered from remote locations in poetic flowing prose loaded with metaphors and allegories.
In a long chapter describing his stay In the high Arctic at Skeaeling Island with archaeologists, he muses about the dreaming and the lives of the nomadic Thule and Dorset peoples who subsisted in that harsh environment many centuries earlier. His introspection and respect for those people lead to what seem like almost schizophrenic connections between listening to classical music and making connections with a long-lost culture.
Perhaps the best chapter relates his embedded experiences in Australia where he joins aboriginals in the northwest whose way of life is totally disrupted by extractive industries and the prevalent search for a positive bottom line. But it is also hard to skip over his description of trips as a National Science Foundation researcher to Antarctica, with his awesome descriptions of its unique beauty.
With sensitivity to and reverent admiration for all of nature, his philosophical disquisitions about the history and possible future of Homo sapiens as he searches with a Richard Leakey party for fossil remnants in the Kenyan Rift Valley are also inspiring.
The character of the author deserves some comment. Although never mentioned, he must have some unique ability to connect with virtually anyone else on the planet, to get invited to present at academic conferences and to join researchers in their quest for early fossil hominids in Kenya and meteorites in the ice of Antarctica. Based in Oregon, it is hard to believe, with his description of multiple extended trips to remote areas around the globe, that he actually spends much time with his family there. But whether flying a kite at the South Pole or risking malaria in Kenya, he seems to relish risky undertakings in a admirable quest to understand the role of Homo sapiens in the universe.
A couple of many memorable quotes. “The world outside the self is indifferent to the fate of the self.” “Reactionary resentment around issues of race and culture has no future but warfare.”
This is a remarkable literary masterpiece with great observations, keen insights, profound wisdom – a pleasure to read.
The Passionate Reader 