Going Alone: Women's Adventures in the Wild (Adventura Books) [Paperback]

Susan Fox Rogers (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 13, 2004 | Series: Adventura Books

While many dream of solo adventure, these talented and adventurous women show how it’s done. Whether hiking in Nepal, caving, sailing through choppy ocean waters, or discovering Alaska on foot, the women in these essays eloquently convey not only the thrills of the solo adventure, but also examine the complicated motivations and fears that can accompany such journeys. With its thoughtful exploration of numerous themes—trust and intuition, danger and invincibility, challenges and rewards—and its celebration of adventure, Going Alone explores the many ways that women find fulfillment, and is sure to provide ample inspiration for those contemplating their own forays into the wild.

Editorial Reviews

Review

These essays encapsulate the human spirit, and in particular the female spirit. -- Toronto Globe & Mail, July 31, 2004

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Seal Press (May 13, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1580051065
• ISBN-13: 978-1580051064
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #807,821 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I was born premature. That was the end of my precociousness. Mostly, I have spent my life trying to find quiet jobs that allow some psychological space where I can write in my head as I work. I've worked on a ranch, in a candy factory (Russell Stover), in retail stores selling shoes. I've built furniture, cooked for a gourmet catering service in NYC, cooked, also, in a weird little cafe run by a reverend healer who cured people's ailments with a pendulum and herbs. I was an aide on a locked psych ward, a tenured college professor, a graphic artist, a UPS driver, and now and again I still work as a professional brainstormer for branding companies. I was extremely grateful for the chance to go to college (it was never a given), but I also feel that these life experiences inform my writing as much as any class ever has. The publishing editor of one of my books told me I wrote like I was raised by wolves. I try to live up to that daily.

Along with the books listed here, you can read my work in many magazines, including, Orion Magazine, Spirituality and Health, Three Coyotes, Yoga International, The Body-Soul Connection, Fourth River, Hawk and Handsaw, and many others.

I'm grateful to these fellowships and Residencies:
Mary Roberts-Rinehart National Fellowship
Ucross Foundation
Colorado Council on the Arts Literature Fellowship
Colorado Art Ranch
Atlantic Center for the Arts
and others.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Inspiration for Solo Adventurers, March 7, 2006

By 

K. A. Handyside (Detroit, MI) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Going Alone: Women's Adventures in the Wild (Adventura Books) (Paperback)

I can't recommend this book highly enough. I'm a single older woman who always hikes alone, because my friends aren't into hiking. I thought I was the only one in this situation and was beginning to think that there was something wrong with me, because I do enjoy the solitude of solo hiking. Then I found "Going Alone" in my local bookstore. I read a couple of pages and bought it. I found myself muttering, "Me, too!" several times while reading it.

The essays cover a broad range of outdoor pursuits and the writing is excellent. It is really an inspiration for the solo adventurer.

4.0 out of 5 stars Introspective, July 2, 2010

By 

ghost of a red rose "ghost of a red rose" (Mesa, AZ USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Going Alone: Women's Adventures in the Wild (Adventura Books) (Paperback)

This is a collection of short essays from various female authors about their solo wilderness experiences. They include hiking and backpacking, camping, cycling in France, kayaking, technical climbing, cross-country skiing, sailing, a solo hike in Antarctica (!), caving, fishing in Alaska the day after 9/11, and trekking in Nepal.

Considering the variety and strenuousness of these trips, I expected a exciting book of adventure. I was surprised to find that the stories are thoughtful and introspective - sometimes downright spiritual - rather than exciting. Although once I thought about it, it made sense. Women alone in the wilderness aren't going to take any dangerous risks, so these generally aren't stories of travel mishaps or life-threatening survival situations. And since the women are alone (theoretically - see below), there's no stories of amusing companions, relationships, or lively conversation. Aside from descriptions of the things she sees, a woman traveling alone in the wilderness can only write about her thoughts and feelings.

So this makes for a slow, non-thrilling, read, yet a valuable one. Unlike some travel anthologies I have read, the quality of the writing is consistently high. Which also is not surprising when you think about it. It takes considerably more skill to write an introspective essay than it does to recount the story of an exciting adventure. Three of the stories are particularly outstanding: "In The Tracks of the Old Ones," by Geneen Marie Haugen; "How Shall I Pray," by Susan Marsh; and "Turning Back," by Sherry Simpson. All are about aging and facing the realization that you are not as strong as you used to be and can no longer do the things you used to. In Sherry Simpson's bittersweet story, that fact is realized in the body of her faithful canine companion.

I was puzzled by the inclusion of "Reference Points," by Elyse Fields. It's a good story. But it doesn't belong in this particular book, as it tells of exploring unmapped sections of cave with some teenage male companions. What's that doing in a book called Going Alone?

(223 pages)

Quotes from Going Alone:

"I'm all for enhancing and adorning, but at what point does enhancement become cover, mask, make-up; self-exile, self-vanishing? In a culture that values fleeting youth and beauty beyond all other facets of a woman, where is solid ground, the bedrock beneath her feet?

I walked an uncertain path between a youthful wildness that attracts its own unearned attention and the less-sanctioned appeal of a woman at a certain age, gone a little too wild. In a world where people are dying of starvation and epidemic disease, aging is an admirable event. But the educated West is alarmingly short on perspective and reason, and I was dismayed as any aging starlet at the palpable attention my mere physical presence no longer engendered." - Geneen Marie Haugen

"An icon of American beauty, Marilyn Monroe, once said, 'I want to grow old without face-lifts. They take the life out of a face, the character. I want to have the courage to be loyal to the face I've made.' But Marilyn self-vanished, and who knows if one legendary woman's loyalty to her aging self might have enlarged what the cultural eye regards as worthy of celebration." - Geneen Marie Haugen

"These were ordinary women, women who'd navigated careers, children, husbands, and more than the requisite tragedies, women whose imaginations had not atrophied along with their ovaries, physically and soulfully manifested women who'd left only a scattering of humble markers on their paths. Ordinary as limestone, ordinary as diamonds." - Geneen Marie Haugen

". . . how much easier to be a prospector than an adventurer. Looking for gold was solid reason to roam around these hills. But looking for glory, or looking for God - that's just asking for failure."

- Sherry Simpson

"I cried. This is something wilderness is good for: crying as loudly as you want, letting tears and snot run down your face as you shake and sob. I cried because this was not the summer I would walk alone after all. I cried because I hated the idea of retracing my steps. I cried because the shadowed hills ahead would not reveal their mysteries to me.

And I cried because every time I looked at my old dog's face, I could see death in it. I knew she would die some day, of course. We all will. You know it and I know it, but we know it as dispassionately as a memo, as formally as a warranty that we glance at once and then tuck away in a junk drawer we hardly look in. There is no gut truth in such knowledge. But in that moment I knew that my dog would die before long, ad soon enough, I will, too. I myself had seen the red and slick tenderness of my own organs. I had seen the future in a lonely old woman holding out a Polaroid of a tumor the size of a basketball.

This, then, was my only discovery: that I had reached the place where middle age tips into loss, when everything worth caring about begins to disappear - not just my beloved dog, but relatives, friends, my husband, time itself, and all its possibilities. For two days I had walked just to arrive at this place, just so I could recognize that in life there is no turning back." - Sherry Simpson

"People make journeys out of curiosity, angst, and unrelenting boredom. Some have a mission, a message, and some go hoping they'll stumble across one. No doubt plenty step off the edge because they're afraid - and travel can suspend the inevitable reality - of seeing things as they really are, or because they are faced with an unattractive choice. Nobler excuses, say discovery or perspective or a parallel universe, are easily exposed for the sorry affliction they actually rationalize: wanderlust.

You're either a wanderer or you're not. If you are, the world is your personal enigma, and terra incognita beckons suggestively with answers to questions you never asked, only to poke holes in things you thought you knew.

But sometimes you just need a break." - Annie Getchell

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars title is misleading, February 19, 2009

By 

BushWoman "Nativeborn" (Alaska) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Going Alone: Women's Adventures in the Wild (Adventura Books) (Paperback)

I was disappointed in this book. A few of the stories are interesting but I would not call camping in the backyard for an hour during childhood or kayaking the Hudson for an hour "wild" adventures. I also am turned off by some of the contributor's attmept at writing, trying too hard to be clever, and failing.