Cooper's Creek: Thoughts

Cooper’s Creek is the heart-wrenching account of the 1860s expedition to cross the interior of Australia from south to north. No one had ever survived this journey before, in fact, the colonies all around the coast of Australia didn’t even know what they would find in the interior of the continent. Many believed that there would be a large inland sea, while others believed there would be tremendous mountain ranges. Part of the purpose of the journey was exploration and discovery, as the author put it, “to go where no one else had ever been before.” Another reason for the expedition was the fact that the south of Australia was separated from Europe by 4 months journey, and if they were successfully able to cross the continent on foot, then it would be possible to connect the colonies with Europe by telegraph, reducing communication time to a matter of hours.

The leader of the expedition was a man named Robert O’Hara Burke, and his second in command was 26 year-old William John Wills. After months of preparation and traveling to get themselves into position to make a push across the interior, Burke and Wills set out on a mad dash to the Gulf of Carpentaria with two other companions, John King and Charley Gray. They left behind the bulk of their team and supplies at a depot on Cooper’s Creek, where they intended to return in three months time. Everything went well for a while, but then all good fortune failed them. I can’t think of another group of travelers that had worse luck.

Burke and company made it across the continent all right, but on their return journey to Cooper’s Creek, they ran out of food, and when they were just one day out from the depot, Charley Gray passed away. The team began the task of burying Gray, which in their exhausted state took them most of the day. That evening they arrived at the depot and Wills’ personal journal relates what they found.

“Sunday 21^st April 1861.—Arrived at the depot this evening, just in time to find it deserted. A note left in the plant by Brahe communicates the pleasing information that they had started today for the Darling [another river].”

The backup crew had been stationed at the depot with instructions to await the return of Burke’s team, but at the direction of their leader Brahe, they had abandoned the depot the very morning of the day when Burke returned. In their worn out condition, Burke, Wills and King could not even consider chasing after Brahe’s team. They left a note buried in the cache and slowly continued on down the Cooper, choosing to remain next to a source of water rather than follow after Brahe. The rest of their story is nothing short of tragic.

Burke’s team missed Brahe by about 9 hours. 15 days later Brahe returned to the depot to see if anyone had come, but failed to notice they had been there. About three weeks later, Burke’s team thinks they hear a gunshot, so Wills makes a mad dash back to the depot to see if anyone is there and he doesn’t realize that Brahe has been back. About three months later, Brahe returns with the rescue party and doesn’t detect that Burke’s team has been there since he last left. Brahe stayed only a few minutes and then continued on. The next day, the rescue party found King wandering through the desert like a mad man, Burke and Wills having died at the end of June.

I have to admit I struggled with this book. First of all, this is the first book that I’ve read from this list that was not written in the first person by someone who experienced the adventure, so it was harder for me to connect with the story. The constant back and forth of bad luck was also maddening at times. The author said it in this way,

“Even across a gap of a hundred years it is difficult not to feel indignant. This was too hard; surely they might have been allowed, if not success, at least a little respite: a shower of rain, a pigeon… making for a waterhole, just one faint whisper of hope instead of this endless implacable rejection. The narrow margin by which they had missed Brahe at the depot had been, in the main, bad luck, and Brahe’s failure on his return visit to realize that they had been there, though maddening, was a comprehensible twist of fate.”

In light of this terrible ending to their expedition, it is important to recognize that Burke, Wills and King were successful in achieving what they set out to achieve. The fact that they all died as a result of their journey (King died a year after being rescued, having never fully recovered) does not diminish the reality that they achieved something truly remarkable.

My rating: 6 out of 10

January's Book: Cooper's Creek

In 1860, an expedition set out from Melbourne, Australia, into the interior of the country, with the mission to find a route to the northern coast. Headed by Robert O'Hara Burke and William John Wills, the party of adventurers, scientists, and camels set out into the outback hoping to find enough water and to keep adequate food stores for their trek into the bush. Almost one year later, Burke, Wills, and two others from their party, Gray and King, reached the northern shore but on their journey back, they were stranded at Cooper's Creek where all but King perished. Cooper's Creek is a gripping, intense historical narrative about the harshness of the Australian outback and the people who were brave enough to go into the very depths of that uncharted country.

(Summary from the back of the book)

No Picnic on Mount Kenya: Thoughts

“No Picnic on Mount Kenya” was an exciting and unique take on a mountain climbing adventure. With the ultimate goal of climbing the 17,000 ft Mount Kenya (the second tallest mountain in Africa), Benuzzi and his companions first had to escape from the POW camp where they were held captive. What makes this story even more unique is that these men planned from the very beginning to return to their prison camp after their attempt on the mountain. They had many reasons for this, and I won’t list them here, but their chief motivation was to escape the monotony of camp life. They had no hopes of escaping and making it away safely, but since they had to wait in prison they wanted something to help them pass the time.

So they began preparing a mountain climbing expedition in complete secret while in the confines of a POW camp. They had to collect everything they could save by way of food and supplies over a period of eight months, while at the same time using scrap metal to manufacture much of their gear, including ice axes and crampons. These men endeavored to climb a world class peak using ropes that were intended to secure their bed sheets to their bunks. Now that’s what I call chutzpah!

After a clever escape from camp and a treacherous crossing of occupied territory, the group of travelers found themselves in the heart of an African jungle. This was big game territory with wild rhinos, elephants, lions, leopards, etc. and all they had to defend themselves were two ice axes they had converted from hammers. After several close calls with a rhino, a leopard, and an elephant, they finally reached the base of the mountain and were able to begin their ascent.

I won’t recount the whole story here… I just hoped to illustrate how awesome this book really is. It’s a prison break, a jungle safari, and a mountain climb all rolled into one. It was a lot of fun to read. That being said, one of the things that made this book meaningful to me was the way it captures the indomitable nature of man. Benuzzi and his companions were prisoners of war, stuck in what is arguably one of the most demoralizing of all human experiences. And yet, when they looked out the door of their bunk house each morning, they could see the summit of Mount Kenya towering above them in the clouds, and their spirits were drawn to it.

Benuzzi put it like this, “standing in the ranks at morning roll-call and seeing Batian [the peak of Mount Kenya] beckoning me with its shimmering glaciers, I sometimes felt like running away on the spot, to seek and to meet adventure halfway.”

One of the things I found most humorous about this story was the note that Benuzzi and his companions left when they escaped. They sent a letter to their camp commander letting him know that they were escaping, but that they would be back in fourteen days. I wonder what must have been going through the commander’s head when he read that note! After their adventure, the men snuck back in to camp and took a day to read their mail and get some food in their systems before turning themselves in to the commander. They were sentenced to twenty eight days in solitary confinement as punishment, but only served seven days of their sentence because the commander “appreciated [their] sporting effort.” Sounds to me like a small price to pay for such a life changing adventure!

My rating: 7 out of 10

December's Book: No Picnic on Mount Kenya

In 1943, Felice Benuzzi and two Italian compatriots escaped from a British POW camp in equatorial East Africa with only one goal in mind--to climb the dangerous seventeen-thousand-foot Mount Kenya. No Picnic on Mount Kenya is the classic tale of this most bizarre and thrilling adventure, a story that has earned its place as a unique masterpiece of daring and suspense.

(Summary from Goodreads.com)

Adrift: Thoughts

Steven Callahan’s survival story Adrift had me fully engrossed within the first ten minutes. I finished the entire book in two days because I could not put it down.

Callahan shares the story of his disastrous attempt at a solo crossing of the Atlantic. He sailed from the Canaries in January, 1982 on his ship Napoleon Solo. Seven days out, he was asleep in his cabin when the side of his ship suddenly burst open, spilling the sea into his little world. In a few desperate moments, he grabbed what he could and jumped into the life raft that would be his home for the next 76 days. Unable to move his small vessel against the current, Callahan drifted over 1,800 miles across the ocean. Battling storms, sharks, blistering thirst, debilitating hunger, and the constant strain of never being able to rest for more than a few hours at a time, it is miraculous that he was able to pull through.

One of the most captivating elements of Callahan’s narrative is his relationship with the school of fish that accompanied him on his journey. They arrived almost the very first day and nudged him through the floor of his raft nearly every hour of his crossing.  They provided him with life sustaining food, and more importantly, with companionship. They even left the sea on the same day as him, being captured by the very fishermen who rescued Callahan from his raft. He marveled frequently at how accommodating the fish were. As he grew weaker, they seemed to do their best to help him.

“Why, when I had trouble hunting, did the dorado come closer? Why did they make it increasingly easier for me as I and my weapon became more broken and weak, until in the end they lay on their sides right under my point? Why have they provided me just enough food to hang on for eighteen hundred nautical miles? I know that they are only fish, and I am only a man. We do what we must and only what Nature allows us to do in this life. Yet sometimes the fabric of life is woven into such a fantastic pattern. I needed a miracle and my fish gave it to me. That and more.”

There is no doubt that miraculous circumstances combined to bring Callahan home. He spent over two months literally straddling the line between life and death. Just when he seemed to have enough water, his spear would break and he would have no way of catching fish. Once his spear was repaired and he had food, his still would break and he would not be able to get water. Just after a rainstorm allowed him to collected 6 ounces of drinking water, his raft would blow a hole. After patching the hole, he would lie down and try to rest, only to be awoken by a shark pounding his body through the bottom of the raft and he would have to get up and defend himself. He seemed to have the entire ocean against him, yet through perseverance and ingenuity, he always managed to keep his head above water.

“For now, I can say that I am grateful for this experience and for the stream down which it continues to float me. I would not volunteer to go through it again, but the sea that tested me also proved forgiving enough to let me live, to show me how to live. For the first time in my life I felt truly humbled. It is just another irony with which my tale is filled—the heartfelt realization of one’s insignificance yields a calming sense of being completely connected to the greater whole. As a tiny part of the world and humanity, I now feel more at peace and much larger than I ever felt as a man alone.”

My rating: 9 out of 10

November's Book: Adrift

Before The Perfect Storm, before In the Heart of the Sea, Steven Callahan's Adrift chronicled one of the most astounding voyages of the century and one of the great sea adventures of all time. In some ways the model for the new wave of adventure books, Adrift is now an undeniable seafaring classic, a riveting firsthand account by the only man known to have survived for more than a month alone at sea, fighting for his life in an inflatable raft after his small sloop capsized only six days from port. Racked by hunger, buffeted by storms, scorched by the tropical sun, Callahan drifted for 1,800 miles, fighting off sharks with a makeshift spear and watching as nine ships passed him by. "A real human drama that delves deeply into man's survival instincts" (Library Journal), Adrift is a story of anguish and horror, of undying heroism, hope, and survival, and a must-read for any adventure lover.

(Summary from the back of the book)

Wind, Sand and Stars: Thoughts

In Wind, Sand and Stars Antoine De Saint-Exupery takes readers back to the days when pilots were still venturing into the unknown world between the earth and sky.

“A pilot’s business is with the wind, with the stars, with night, with sand, with sea. He strives to outwit the forces of nature. He stares in expectancy for the coming dawn the way a gardener awaits the coming of spring. He looks forward to port as to a promised land, and truth for him is what lives in the stars.”

One thing I enjoyed about this book was that the pilots and their planes were still very much at the mercy of nature. Their planes were small and not very powerful, unlike planes today. They could not just shoot through the sky, guided by computers and powered by twin jet engines. When there was a storm they had to fly through it, not over it. At one point the author describes an amazing storm that one of his friends had to fly through of the coast of South Africa, a storm where water tornadoes were shooting up out of the sea all around him.

“Great black waterspouts had reared themselves seemingly in the immobility of temple pillars. Swollen at their tops, they were supporting the squat and lowering each arch of the tempest, but through the rifts in the arch there fell slabs of light and the full moon sent her radiant beams between the pillars down upon the frozen tiles of the sea. Through these uninhabited ruins Mermoz made his way, gliding slantwise from one channel of light to the next, circling round those giant pillars in which there must have rumbled the upsurge of the sea, flying for four hours through these corridors of moonlight toward the exit from the temple.”

For me, the best part of this book is the chapter in which the author describes his survival experience in the Sahara desert. He and his copilot were stranded for over 3 days with less than a pint of water. After walking in the desert for 100 miles with nothing to drink, Antoine lays down in the sand and buries himself, expecting to die by morning. Throughout this experience he had seen numerous mirages and hallucinations and it tore at my heart every time he was filled with elation that he had been saved, only to realize that the images before him were only in his mind. Through amazing endurance and sheer luck the two men were saved, after coming within hours of literally shriveling up like raisins. The story is too good for me to summarize here. It’s chapter 8… you should read it.

Lastly, I enjoyed the author’s poetic view on life. He was very philosophical and often paused to reflect on the world around him. I loved the following passage, though it left me with a sense of sadness:

“Gazing at this transfigured desert I remember the games of my childhood—the dark and golden park we peopled with gods; the limitless kingdom we made of this square mile never thoroughly explored, never thoroughly charted. We created a secret civilization where footfalls had a meaning and things a savor known in no other world.”

            “And when we grow to be men and live under other laws, what remains of that park filled with the shadows of childhood, magical, freezing, burning? What do we learn when we return to it and stroll with a sort of despair along the outside of its little wall of gray stone, marveling that within a space so small we should have founded a kingdom that seemed to us infinite—what do we learn except that in this infinity we shall never again set foot, and that it is into the game and not the park that we have lost the power to enter?”

My rating: 6 out of 10