John Baldwin and Linda Bily, Soul of Wilderness: Mountain Journeys in Western BC and Alaska (Harbour Publishing, 2015).
There has been an unfortunate yet understandable tendency within Canadian mountaineering literature and photography to frontstage the Rockies and subordinate BC Coastal Mountains to secondary status. There has also been the tendency to valourize rock jocks, first ascents (on ever more difficult and trying routes and pitches) and minimize a more artistic and contemplative yet equally competent approach to mountaineering. The sheer breakthrough beauty of Soul of Wilderness is that “mountain journeys in western BC and Alaska” are front staged and the “soul of the wilderness” rather than a simple literal approach to the mountains is the core of this burnished gold book—truly artists, mountaineers, contemplatives and photographers wed and knitted together in this A++ keeper of a mountaineering classic.
This wordsmith of a text and exquisite photographs evoke and draw the curious and keen reader into both the form and soul of the mountains. John and Linda should be heartily congratulated for a pure diamond of a book that, simply put, has no competitors and would be hard to surpass—it is truly the west coast mountaineering book of 2015 to purchase, read and inwardly and meditatively digest. The expansive photographs, for the most part, cover treks on glaciers, high alpine traverses and fine sloping snowfields. There are a few photographs that span the mountain seasons, but most of the visual delights in Soul of Wilderness have been on ski trips in western BC and Alaska.
There are 10 chapters in this must buy book: 1) Footsteps in the Wilderness, 2) Wilderness at our Doorstep, 3) Where the Ridges Run Wild, 4) Whales and Icefields, 5) Gentle Wilderness, 6) Ski Wild, 7) Thirty Years on Ice, 8) Both Sides of the Stikine, 9) Touch the Wild and 10) Soul of Wilderness. There is often a graphic and, at times, subtle transition from urban to rural to wilderness to a wildness ethos---John and Linda have tracked the trail well and made it abundantly clear why wilderness and wildness are essential for a sane and centred soul—the soul of the wilderness is, in essence, oxygen for the human soul—without such oxygen, our souls shrink, wither and, eventually, die.
The BC mountaineering community has a rich line and lineage. Dick Culbert took mountaineering to new levels in his creative years. John Clarke told yet a fuller tale and story. John Baldwin and Linda Bily very much stand on the solid and innovative shoulders of Dick Culbert and John Clarke and Soul of Wilderness: Mountain Journeys in Western BC and Alaska amply illustrate why this is the indisputable case.
Ron Dart
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