Nature Travel

This masterpiece of nature writing by Nan Shepherd describes her journeys into “the high and holy places” of the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland. There she encounters a world of spectacular cliffs, deep silences, and lakes so clear that they cannot be imagined. As she walks through clouds, endures blizzards, and watches the great spirals of eagles in flight, Shepherd comes to know something about the hidden life of this remarkable landscape—and also herself.

At 28,251 feet, the world's second-tallest mountain, K2 thrusts skyward out of the Karakoram Range of northern Pakistan. Climbers regard it as the ultimate achievement in mountaineering, with good reason. Four times as deadly as Everest, K2 has claimed the lives of seventy-seven climbers since 1954. In August 2008 eleven climbers died in a single thirty-six-hour period on K2–the worst single-event tragedy in the mountain's history and the second-worst in the long chronicle of mountaineering in the Himalaya and Karakoram ranges.

From the highly acclaimed author of Ninety-two in the Shade and Cloudbursts comes a collection of alternately playful and exquisite essays—including seven collected here for the first time—borne of a lifetime spent fishing.

From the National Book Award-winning writer, humanitarian, environmentalist and author of the now-classic Arctic Dreams: a vivid, poetic, capacious work that recollects the travels around the world and the encounters - human, animal, and natural - that have shaped his extraordinary life. Poignantly, powerfully, it also asks "How do we move forward?" Taking us nearly from pole to pole - from modern megacities to some of the most remote regions on the earth - Barry Lopez gives us his most far-ranging yet personal work to date.

After graduating from college, Jennifer isn't sure what she wants to do with her life. She is drawn to the Appalachian Trail, a 2,175-mile footpath that stretches from Georgia to Maine. Though her friends and family think she's crazy, she sets out alone to hike the trail, hoping it will give her time to think about what she wants to do next. The next four months are the most physically and emotionally challenging of her life.

The Climb is a true, gripping, and thought-provoking account of the worst disaster in the history of Mt. Everest: On May 10, 1996, two commercial expeditions headed by experienced leaders attempted to climb the highest mountain in the world, but things went terribly wrong...

From the sun-scorched sands of the Kalahari to the snake-infested jungles of the Amazon, Les Stroud has made a life of surviving in the harshest - and most remote - regions on Earth. Now, the creator, producer, and host of the hit television program Survivorman transfers his decades of knowledge and experience to the audiobook Survive!, a practical guide that gives everyday listeners a no-nonsense look at the real world of survival.

Few books have captured the haunting world of music and rivers and of the sport they provide as well as A River Never Sleeps. Roderick L. Haig-Brown writes of fishing not just as a sport, but also as an art. He knows moving water and the life within it - its subtlest mysteries and perpetual delights. He is a man who knows fish lore as few people ever will, and the legends and history of a great sport. Month by month, he takes you from river to river, down at last to the saltwater and the sea.

A little over 100 years ago, East Africa was terra incognita to most whites: a land largely unmapped, sparsely settled by Europeans, and teeming with wildlife. It was the hunter-adventurer's paradise, and by the early 20th century, a small, lionhearted clan of explorers and big-game hunters began leading safaris there for money.

Spanning an extraordinary range of subjects and locations, these ten gripping essays show why Jon Krakauer is considered a standard-bearer of modern journalism.

Explore the world through its most unlikely creatures: Cryptozoology, the study of hidden, monstrous, and legendary animals, is truly the art of discovering the unknown. Richard Freeman, Zoological Director of Centre for Fortean Zoology, has explored the corners of the five continents on the search for creatures that many people believe are non-existent. In this book, he shares the exciting stories of his investigations of the Yeti, Mongolian Deathworm, Loch Ness Monster, Orang-Pendak, Ninki-Naka, and more.

"I never set out to hike 10,000 miles. It just sort of happened over the course of a decade." And so goes Lawton Grinter's compelling collection of short stories that have been over ten years and 10,000 trail miles in the making. I Hike brings the reader trailside with blissful moments on the highest mountain ridges to the mental lows of mosquito hell and into some peculiar situations that even seasoned hikers may find unbelievable.

Where did the tree house come from? Before Jack and Annie can find out, the mysterious tree house whisks them back to the prehistoric past. Now they have to figure out how to get home. Can they do it before dark, or will they become a dinosaur's dinner?

Nobody wakes up in the morning and decides to shut down their senses and stumble through each day in an oblivious bubble, and yet some people end up having much richer experiences than others. In this guidebook, natural navigator Tristan Gooley strives to reawaken our senses to help us understand and deepen our personal experience of nature. His message is to connect - however we can and to whatever draws us in.

For readers and viewers of The Perfect Storm, opening this long-awaited work by Sebastian Junger will be like stepping off the deck of the Andrea Gail and into the inferno of a fire burning out of control in the steep canyons of Idaho. Here is the same meticulous prose brought to bear on the inner workings of a terrifying elemental force; here is a cast of characters risking everything in an effort to bring that force under control.

Off Grid and Free: My Path to the Wilderness is the story of the journey Ron Melchiore undertook as a young man from the city, first to homesteading in northern Maine and then to living in the bush of northern Saskatchewan. He has lived off grid since approximately 1980 and speaks candidly about the joys and the tribulations of his chosen lifestyle.

Banff is one of the most renowned tourist destinations in Canada and the most popular in the Canadian Rockies. It is the oldest national park in Canada, the second in North America (following Yellowstone in Wyoming) and the third oldest park in the world (following Royal in Australia). It encompasses 6,641 square kilometres (2,564 square miles) including the Lake Louise area and part of the Icefields Parkway.

Joe Tasker lies, struck down by illness, in a damp, bug-infested room in the Himalaya, wondering if he will be well enough to climb Dunagiri, his first venture to the "big" mountains. One of Britain’s foremost mountaineers and a pioneer of lightweight climbing, he is about to attempt one of the first true "Alpine-style" climbs in the Greater Ranges. The Dunagiri attempt forms part of Tasker’s striking tale of adventure in the savage arena of the mountains.

In No Shortage of Good Days John Gierach takes listeners from the Smokies in Tennessee to his home waters in Colorado, from the Canadian Maritimes to Mexico - saltwater or fresh, it's all fishing and all irresistible. As always he writes perceptively about a wide range of subjects: the charm of familiar waters, the etiquette of working with new fishing guides, night fishing when the trout and the mosquitoes are both biting, and fishing snobbery, a pitfall he seems to have largely avoided.

Combining accounts of legendary mountain ascents with vivid descriptions of his own forays into wild, high landscapes, Robert Macfarlane reveals how the mystery of the world's highest places has come to grip the Western imagination - and perennially draws legions of adventurers up the most perilous slopes. His story begins three centuries ago, when mountains were feared as the forbidding abodes of dragons and other mysterious beasts.