Join us on a literary world trip!
Add this book to bookshelf
Grey
Write a new comment Default profile 50px
Grey
Subscribe to read the full book or read the first pages for free!
All characters reduced
Meetings on the Edge - cover

We are sorry! The publisher (or author) gave us the instruction to take down this book from our catalog. But please don't worry, you still have more than 500,000 other books you can enjoy!

Meetings on the Edge

Mags MacKean

Publisher: Neil Wilson Publishing

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

Summary

Meetings On The Edge is a travel memoir by Mags MacKean, a once-frustrated journalist for the BBC, who took the plunge and abandoned a ten-year career to follow her dream to become a mountaineer. The book explores the impact of a solitary journey as well as unexpected encounters with some fascinating people along the way. The different natural environments she encounters mirror the demands of an evolving quest. The many lessons of nature's classroom are set against a background of adventure, discovery and undertaken with considerable personal risk. Like all quests, the incidental insights and surprising events challenge the romantic idea of adventure. Stories from Alaska, the Pacific North-West, the Himalaya and New Zealand's Southern Alps are interwoven into the central adventure of traversing the French and Spanish Pyrenees alone. Tales to highlight include encountering a naked and all too aroused flasher far off the beaten track, a colourful relationship with Nepal's most famous civilian, a film star, two weeks after the massacre of the royal family, and summiting Denali, North America's highest peak, while the expedition dwindled from 9 to just 4 due to life-threatening illness and mishap. But it was after a chance meeting with a wise Maori man and a solitary encounter with a 2000-year-old Kauri tree in an ancient forest, that the author experiences an epiphany: that a restless, goal-driven life is not the most fulfilling. The book ends in the foothills of the Pyrenees, where the freedom she has experienced is in marked contrast to the security-conscious existence of those living there. The electric gates, fencing and hedgerows project a community in fear of those very open spaces which had broadened her horizons. This is travel writing of a high and insightful order and marks Mags MacKean as a new and exciting proponent of this genre.
Available since: 01/30/2013.

Other books that might interest you

  • A Tour of the Bulge Battlefields - cover

    A Tour of the Bulge Battlefields

    Karl Cavanagh, William C. C....

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    A fascinating photographic trip through the site of the last great battle of World War II.   Most Americans are patriotic, their interest in World War Two having been stimulated by such movies as Saving Private Ryan. Hundreds of thousands are the descendants of men who saw service in the Battle of the Bulge. This battle still holds the record for the highest number of American troops engaged in any single pitched battle in the history of the United States Army. Americans of the postwar generations are taking an interest in what their fathers and grandfathers did during the war. Those whose relatives served in the Ardennes often visit Belgium and Luxembourg in an attempt to learn more about those now legendary days of World War Two. This guidebook serves as a memorial to those who served. It will enable those who didn’t to learn something about the hardship endured by a previous generation in the name of freedom.  
    Show book
  • Understanding Mental Health - cover

    Understanding Mental Health

    Anthony Ekanem

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    When you hear the term "emotional health or mental health", what is the first thing that usually comes into your mind? According to researches, mental health normally includes social well-being pertaining to psychological and emotional standings. Mental health affects the way people think, act and feel. In addition to this, mental health also has the ability to help you determine the effective ways of how to handle your stress, make choices and relate to other people. Mental health is essential in each stage of your life, from childhood, adolescence and adulthood. For those people who are experiencing mental health issues and problems, there is a great chance that your behaviour, mood and thinking will be affected. There are different factors that usually contribute to your mental health issues and problems such as family history, life experiences that include abuse and trauma and biological factors that include brain chemistry and genes. It is a fact that mental health issues and problems are very common; however, help and prevention is always available. 
    People who are suffering from mental health issues and problems have a great chance to get better and recover completely. For those individuals who are experiencing mental health issues and problems, it is imperative that you are familiar and aware about the warning signs of having mental health issues and problems. If you have positive and effective mental health, it will allow you to make meaningful contributions to your community, work productively, cope with stress and realize your full potential.
    Show book
  • Every Person in New York - cover

    Every Person in New York

    Jason Polan

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    From the late artist’s unfinished project, a compendium of drawings capturing the characters, and character, of New York City. 
     
    Jason Polan was on a mission to draw every person in New York, from cab drivers to celebrities. He drew people eating at Taco Bell, admiring paintings at the Museum of Modern Art, and sleeping on the subway. With a foreword by Kristen Wiig, Every Person in New York, Volume 1 collects thousands of Polan’s energetic drawings in one chunky book. As full as a phone book and as invigorating as a walk down a bustling New York street, this is a love letter of sorts to a beloved city and the people who live there. 
     
    “In 2008, illustrator Jason Polan set out to capture the enormous human poetics compressed in Gotham’s geographic smallness by drawing every person in the city. The first seven years of this ongoing project, totaling drawings of 30,000 people, are now collected in Every Person in New York—a marvelous tome of Polan’s black-and-white line drawings, colored in with the intense aliveness of a city where, as E.B. White wrote more than half a century earlier, “wonderful events are taking place every minute.” What emerges is a kind of poetry—fragmentary glimpses of ideas and images, commanded by an internal rhythm to paint a complete whole of this human hive.” —Brain Pickings 
     
    “This digest of sketches brings to life the everyday moments of New Yorkers and finds a spark of excitement in the sometimes-banal shuffle of city living.” —Monocle magazine 
     
    “Polan’s drawings exude, in unbroken but flexible lines, the momentum of a Manhattan streetscape with only brief moments of stillness. Those pauses can last minutes or over an hour, enough time for fully textured, impressionistic portraits. But more often Mr. Polan’s drawings are of scenes that pass in seconds: a father ordering hot dogs for his stubborn children, or Diane Keaton trying to hail a cab.” —The New York Times
    Show book
  • Wet Britches and Muddy Boots - A History of Travel in Victorian America - cover

    Wet Britches and Muddy Boots - A...

    John H. White

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    “Succeeds admirably as an introductory survey of the early American travel experience”—from the National Book Award-nominated author (Journal of Transport History).   What was travel like in the 1880s? Was it easy to get from place to place? Were the rides comfortable? How long did journeys take? Wet Britches and Muddy Boots describes all forms of public transport from canal boats to oceangoing vessels, passenger trains to the overland stage. Trips over long distances often involved several modes of transportation and many days, even weeks. Baggage and sometimes even children were lost en route. Travelers might start out with a walk down to the river to meet a boat for the journey to a town where they caught a stagecoach for the rail junction to catch the train for a ride to the city. John H. White Jr. discusses not only the means of travel but also the people who made the system run—riverboat pilots, locomotive engineers, stewards, stagecoach drivers, seamen. He provides a fascinating glimpse into a time when travel within the United States was a true adventure. “Throughout this massive work, the author repeatedly captures the romance, flavor, and color associated with travel.”—Choice “Every chapter, in any order, will constitute a well-spent and informative read. Journey with this book soon!”—National Railway Historical Society Bulletin “[A] popular history, informative and engaging . . . White has given us a book that’s as unusual as it is useful. Read it cover-to-cover or just pick out a random chapter in a stolen hour, and the book will be equally enjoyable either way.”—Railroad History
    Show book
  • My First Summer in the Sierra (Illustrated Edition) - cover

    My First Summer in the Sierra...

    John Muir

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    My First Summer in the Sierra describes two years period of Muir's life during which he lived in a cabin in Californian mountains.  When he came to California and finally settled in San Francisco, John Muir immediately left for a visit to Yosemite, a place he had only read about. Seeing it for the first time, Muir noted that "He was overwhelmed by the landscape, scrambling down steep cliff faces to get a closer look at the waterfalls, whooping and howling at the vistas, jumping tirelessly from flower to flower." He climbed a number of mountains, including Cathedral Peak and Mount Dana, and hiked the old Indian trail down Bloody Canyon to Mono Lake.
    Show book
  • Haunted Kingsport - Ghosts of Tri-City Tennessee - cover

    Haunted Kingsport - Ghosts of...

    Pete Dykes

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    From a devil cat to a Rebel ghost to the possible resting place of Big Foot—the Kingsport/Johnson City/Bristol region gives up its supernatural secrets.   Summon the necessary courage and dare to explore the haunted history of the “mountain empire.” Tales of ghostly spirits envelop the northeast Tennessee landscape like a familiar mountain fog. Join Pete Dykes, editor of Kingsport’s Daily News, as he offers up a collection of spooky local stories and legends from centuries past, including such spine-chilling accounts as the foreboding ghost of Netherland Inn Road, spectral disturbances at the Rotherwood Mansion, devilish felines, ruthless poltergeists in Caney Creek Falls, the tortured cries from fallen Rebel soldiers still heard today and—could bigfoot really be buried in the woods of Big Stone Gap?   Includes photos!
    Show book