Description:
Some people can take a trip to the gas station and make it sound wild, so surreally alive, that you can see it as a feature-length film.Others could journey to a distant sun and you'd find yourself nodding off, thinking their descriptions make the McNeil-Lehrer Report seem outrageous and riveting. Author-photographer Stephen Gorman, earnest, enthused, and talented though he is, sometimes falls into the second category of adventurer whose storytelling becomes snoreytelling. Where the exact problem lies is anyone's guess. There's nothing wrong with the writing of this journalist, published in Audubon, Outside, and Men's Journal. In this book he travels through wilderness areas from Maine to Hawaii, some so isolated he feels guilty writing of them. There's nothing wrong with following the trails of others before him--be they of Hudson Bay traders, Lewis and Clark, or the Nez Perce--that take him through abandoned canyons, across the Everglades, into pristine waters, or old mountain "towns" so isolated that outlaws by the hundreds once went there to disappear. He canoes, he hikes, he swims; he shadows his text with historical insights and today's environmental woes. Maybe it's the font. But so many of his "adventures" come off flat regardless of the terrain: "The gully is deep and sports an impressive set of sharp, oil-pan-ripping stones.... For perhaps the tenth time this morning, Dan jumps out to do some road work.... After he clears the path, I depress the accelerator ever so slightly, trying to gain purchase without spinning the wheels..... Fortunately, Dan has the good sense to stand off to the side." Thankfully, the book is peppered with photos--some stunning, especially those of birds--to keep you alert whenever unmoving text weights your eyelids. Another plus: the travel planner in back, which gives essential info about each of these 10 trips. Maybe there's nothing wrong with this book. Perhaps nature is by nature boring. At least that's the impression you may get when you doze off reading this take on it. --Melissa Rossi
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