Maybe it’s because of my age—39 if I remember correctly— that I have trouble differentiating between specific book titles these days.
It doesn’t help that so many books have similar titles: The Lost Bookshop, The Lost Words Bookshop, The Lost and Found Bookshop. Who can remember which is which?
I recently bought author John Shivers’s book, Out of Thin Heir, a cozy mystery from his Slop Bucket Mystery series about a murder involving the heir to a fortune. I told John that I was about to start his book, Into Thin Air, and was looking forward to it. I’m sure he wondered whose book I was reading.
I’m enjoying the book, but I persisted in calling it by the wrong title for days, knowing I was getting it wrong and wondering where I got the title Into Thin Air. I finally remembered that book the other day.
My son, despite my influence, grew up as an avid outdoorsman, loving activities like hiking, kayaking, skiing, climbing and spelunking (cave exploration, for folks like me who value their lives and avoid anything that begins with “cave”). I did try to learn about his interests, however, even if it was from the comfort of my chair under the reading lamp.
I knew that David even dreamed of climbing Mt. Everest or at least getting to the first base camp, so I thought I’d better prepare myself in the late 1990s by reading the book he had read and urged me to read, Into Thin Air, by outdoor writer Jon Krakauer.
What I learned was chilling. I guess that’s why the title got stuck in my mind.
In May of 1996, Krakauer, an accomplished climber himself, was sent by Outside Magazine to do a story on the commercialization of Mt. Everest climbing. Despite the grueling requirements for scalingf the 29,028 foot peak, companies were beginning to advertise it almost as a tour for which customers would be provided an experienced guide, supplies, permits and base camps in return for fees of $30,000 to $135,000. It was becoming a lucrative business, but all the costs were not financial, as it turns out.
Krakauer made the climb with a group himself, reaching the summit, then getting caught in a raging storm that almost killed him. He and his group barely made it back to base camp, but they learned the next morning that the group that came up just behind them was stalled in the storm near the summit.
Five of them died, and a sixth was so badly frost-bitten that his right hand had to be amputated. Krakauer’s guide himself died trying to climb back up and help the second group, whose own guide was one of the dead.
Krakauer is an excellent writer and a journalist. His descriptions of the dangerous trek up Mt. Everest are riveting. You feel as if you’re experiencing every step of the dangerous climb yourself.
The most poignant part of the story to me were the shortwave radio messages sent out from Everest’s summit by the dying climbers to their relatives in the world below. Because they had pushed the limits of their resources, they were running out of oxygen and knew that no one could get to them with new supplies in the storm and that they were too exhausted to make the climb down, even if the storm had let up.
A sense of doom permeates the descriptions of the climbers’ last hours. Accusations of faulty planning and poor decision-making flew, but fault-finding couldn’t help those who were dying.
One reviewer said, “Krakauer examines what it is about Everest that has compelled so many people —including himself—to throw caution to the wind, ignore the concerns of loved ones and willingly subject themselves to such risk, hardship and expense. Written with emotional clarity and supported by his unimpeachable reporting, Krakauer’s eyewitness account of what happened on the roof of the world is a singular achievement.”
Largely because of his book, requirements for a Mt. Everest ascent are much more stringent now.
Fortunately, David’s life led him on in different directions, and he never got to Everest. I think a life of raising three kids has been excitement enough for him.
As for me, I’ll enjoy sitting under my reading lamp with my cozy mystery book Out of Thin Heir, remembering that Heir is a word play on Air, and rejoicing that I am reading, not dangling from a rope somewhere in thin air over a crevasse on a mountainside on the border of China and Nepal.
