Walking the Amazon

"I had never been to the Amazon ... but it had a mystique all of its own. Surely the trees would be much bigger, the wildlife had to be much richer and more diverse and the people would be that bit wilder and cut off from the outside world. It gave me butterflies to think of spending time in the Amazon."

On a lark, Ed Stafford and his friend, Luke Collyer, decided to walk the entire length of the Amazon River, all 4,345 miles of it. It'd be a first. No one had ever done it before. They thought it might take them a year. Instead, it took Ed 860 days. (Luke quit after 3 months.) Ed experienced mosquitoes, wasps, and snakes, heat and humidity, blistered and infected feet, flooded forests, hospitality and hostility, hunger, exhilaration, depression, boredom and fear. But through it all, he never considered giving up.

There's something about the Amazon that I find fascinating. I like to read about it and imagine going there someday, but I'd never want to walk it like Stafford did. (I'm not a fan of mud or bugs or snakes or 100% humidiy.) Walking the Amazon is both an interesting and readable memoir; Stafford does a good job of chronicling his long journey, but he focuses more on the day to day logistics--the guides, and tribes, money, gear and food, miles trekked, and the problems encountered along the way--than on the Amazon River itself and the surrounding rain forest. I would have liked a little more description, for him to paint a better picture of where he was walking, and what he saw. There's some. Just not enough for me. It's still a really good read. But I'd have to give it a B+ rather than an A for that reason.

Happy Reading!

Two other books about the Amazon that I enjoyed even more than this one:

Reading the Alphabet, part Y

There are a lot more Y authors to choose from than Z:

Yarbro        Yamamoto        Yellin       Yip       Young        Yttrup

The one that caught my eye?  Yoon, Paul

Snow Hunters is the quiet story of Yohan, a North Korean soldier who defects to Brazil rather than return home to North Korea after the war. Can you imagine? Brazil is so different from Korea. Without knowing the language or understanding the culture, Yohan becomes an apprentice to a Japanese tailor and slowly makes a new life for himself in this strange new country. 

"In the harbor, crates hung suspended in the air. Birds circled them. The sea was clear. It moved toward him and faded and (Yohan) felt the time that had passed and his time here. He thought that he had made the best of it all, that he had worked and made a living, and he felt the contentment of that. He thought of what the years would bring, what sort of life was left in him. ... (And) he wondered what choice there was in what was remembered; and what was forgotten."

This beautifully written book is a story of hope, second chances, and overcoming past sorrows. I loved the glimpses of Yohan's experiences as a soldier and prisoner of war in Korea set alongside his current experiences in Brazil and the kind people he meets and befriends. This isn't a long novel, only 196 pages, but each sentence is thoughtfully crafted, each word carefully chosen. I savored every page. And to think, if I hadn't been browsing the Y shelf at the library I never would have known it existed. Here's to the letter Y!

Happy Reading!

Next up: Young, Sara (My Enemy's Cradle)