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Tuesday, August 26, 2008
*gasp*
Ti: Into Thin Air
Au: John Krakauer
Ed: Audio Bk
Bookmark - pause button or spacing out
Several groups of amateurs attempt to climb mount everest with commerical guides, a nasty storm shows up and bad choices abound. I found it a hard to listen to, especially the many many close calls that bad along with a few that went well.
What is a little amazing to me about this story and others is how much people seem to have forgotten that the world outside really is bigger than us. Weather will kick your ass. You shouldn't kite surf during tropical storms or drive when there's water on the road. Technology and equipment and the supposed human dominance of the world will not save you. And even though I do recognize that intellectually, reading this book there were so many times when I thought "HOW is it possible that someone so CLOSE to a tent couldn't have been saved? HOW is it possible that a person whose location is absolutely known can't be rescued?" So maybe I can understand a little bit why people can be so confidant about marching out into bad situations - you understand that your tiny speck of a self is really no match for nature, without really *believing* it.
It is pretty interesting to hear about this through the author, who was there, as it does give me a sense of how confusing the entire situation was. He really wasn't at all clear at the time about what was going on and only figured many of these things out later, after comparing notes with other survivors and doing some thinking when he had a little more oxygen available.
posted by ~e at
12:59 PM
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