Entering the Stone: On Caves and Feeling Through the Dark [Paperback]

Barbara Hurd (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 17, 2005

In this exhilarating work, Barbara Hurd explores some of the most extraordinary places on earth, from sacred caves in India to secret caves in Arizona. With passionately informed prose, Hurd makes these strange dark spaces -- with their stalactites and blind cave fish and ancient galleries of white flowstone -- come to light, illuminating the natural history and spiritual territory of caves as powerfully as Kathleen Norris portrayed the Dakotas. Entering the Stone provides an awe-inducing tour through a fragile and beautiful subterranean world.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Using a venerable literary device, Hurd explores her inner life through her fascination with caving. Her meditative, flowing prose pauses on sundry people and events in her life, which she illuminates through descriptions and comparisons with her physical surroundings in the subterranean world. Although they are the settings for her musings on vulnerability, solitude, or death, caves also scare Hurd: she opens with an account of a panic attack she once experienced while descending into one. She faced her fear and got right back to spelunking. She also gives rein to thoughts about her deceased father and faces up to the fact that one of her oldest friends is dying. Confessing to a natural reserve, Hurd explains that caves allow her to give in to emotional exuberance: in the dimness fading to darkness, she becomes an intimate perceiver of sound and shape and of the quietude of danger that caves present. Always, Hurd considers why caves draw her in, and though markedly digressive and personal, her essay reveals a questing spirit that will intrigue similarly contemplative readers. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"The first book in years that, finished, left me of a mind to start it all over again." (The Baltimore Sun )

"Not a sensationalist adventure story but rather a sometimes mystical journey of discovery into the hidden recesses of the mind." (Library Journal Starred ) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 170 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (February 17, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618492291
• ISBN-13: 978-0618492299
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,571,336 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars For Book Club, July 2, 2011

By 

momoftwo - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Entering the Stone: On Caves and Feeling Through the Dark (Paperback)

A group of women, who happen to all be naturalists, and I read this as a selection for our book club. It was a good choice. Some women didn't enjoy it that much, said it had too much touchy feely stuff and not enough about caves. Some of the women loved it, they commented that Barbara Hurd's insight into her own psychology contributed to making the book very readable. They could connect with the author. So if you want a book strictly about caves ad caving, this is not for you. However, if you want an enjoyable, readable, foray into the "basics" of caves, you will enjoy this. Honestly, it's a book by a woman, for women.

5.0 out of 5 stars "The stone's alive with what's invisible" Seamus Heaney, June 17, 2008

By 

Laura Bentley "Laura Treacy Bentley" (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Entering the Stone: On Caves and Feeling through the Dark (Paperback)

Very seldom do I read a book twice. ENTERING THE STONE is one of those books. Barbara Hurd's reflections seep under your skin and take you places you've never been. It is frightening and revealing and profound. Hurd has discovered that in our deepest journeys a secret space may emerge, a white dog, the shape of emptiness, a spacious room.

5.0 out of 5 stars An emotional meditation on life when light is gone, February 17, 2007

By 

Brendan M. Howard (Kansas, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Entering the Stone: On Caves and Feeling Through the Dark (Paperback)

It is a strange blessing that I ran across an excerpt of this book online and sought it out. The local library had a copy. I wondered about the experience of a novice spelunking. What I found was one woman's meditation on sorrow and loss and fear and awareness, and how reason and passion, how space and solid, how dark and light criss-cross and make the liminal experiences telling.

Please don't fault her beforehand if I sound too intellectual about it, too. It's a beautifully written exploration of the meaning of life, but it's sometimes very down-to-earth, too.