Life Lived Wild: Adventures at the Edge of the Map
Book by Rick Ridgeway
DETAILS
Publisher : Patagonia (October 26, 2021) Language : English Hardcover : 424 pages ISBN-10 : 193834099X ISBN-13 : 978-1938340994 Item Weight : 2 pounds Dimensions : 6 x 1.25 x 9 inches Best Sellers Rank: #39,696 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #25 in Mountain Climbing #104 in Business Professional's Biographies #130 in Traveler & Explorer Biographies , A life worth living is lived at the edges where it is wild At the beginning of his memoir Life Lived Wild, Adventures at the Edge of the Map , Rick Ridgeway tells us that if you add up all his many expeditions, he’s spent over five years of his life sleeping in tents: “And most of that in small tents pitched in the world’s most remote regions.” It’s not a boast so much as an explanation. Whether at elevation or raising a family back at sea level, those years taught him, he writes, “to distinguish matters of consequence from matters of inconsequence.” He leaves it to his readers, though, to do the final sort of which is which. Some of his travels made, and remain, news: the first American ascent of K2; the first direct coast-to-coast traverse of Borneo; the first crossing on foot of a 300-mile corner of Tibet so remote no outsider had ever seen it. Big as these trips were, Rick keeps an eye out for the quiet surprises, like the butterflies he encounters at 23,000 feet on K2 or the furtive silhouettes of wild-eared pheasants in Tibet. What really comes through best in Life Lived Wild , though, are his fellow travelers. There’s Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, and Doug Tompkins, best known for cofounding The North Face but better remembered for his conservation throughout South America. Some companions don’t make the return journey. Rick treats them all with candor and straightforward tenderness. And through their commitments to protecting the wild places they shared, he discovers his own. A master storyteller, this long-awaited memoir is the book end to Ridgeway’s impressive list of publications, including Seven Summits (Grand Central Publishing, 1988), The Shadow of Kilmanjaro (Holt, 1999), and The Big Open (National Geographic, 2005). Read more
REVIEW
Rick Ridgeway, along with Yvon Chouinard (founder of Patagonia), Doug Tompkins (founder of North Face), and a varied group of climbers and businessmen, formed what they called the Do-Boys (and at the end, one Do-Gal), whose goal was to explore the highest and farthest reaches of our planet. The Do-Boys climbed, kayaked, hauled carts across the desert, and did just about every other crazy adventure one could think of. But that said, over the course of the years, Ridgeway was involved with a number of trips where people died. While his trips were generally well financed and planned expeditions, it felt like the Do-Boys took more unnecessary risks than someone like Ed Viesturs, another amazing climber whose book I read, about climbing all the 8,000 meter peaks without supplemental oxygen (first American to do so). Viesturs took a much more careful, calculated approach, once stopping just a few hundred feet below a very important 8,000 meter summit - one he might never see again, just because he judged the conditions that day to be too risky. I feel like this is the kind of risk Ridgeway and his group might well have taken. All in all, a super fun read, not only about the adventures of the Do-Boys, but also about the conservation efforts of Chouinard and Tompkins, two very wealthy men who have used their fortunes to conserve as much wilderness as they can. Chouinard only a month ago put his company in trust to ensure profits go toward mitigating climate change. Tompkins used his wealth from North Face and Esprit to buy immense tracts of land in Argentina and Chile, which have been used to create several immense parks. As a writer, I can't say Ridgeway is the best outdoor journalist I've ever read. The book reads more like a letter to a friend, but the stories and messages come through loud and clear, and in the end, that's what really counts with a book like this. A big thumbs up from me.
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