Customer Reviews

Steep Passages: A World-wide Eco-Adventurer Unlocks Nature's Spiritual Truths

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This book left me spellbound. Drotar has a true talent for telling tales that move on several levels. A river journey in Southeast Asia becomes a backward journey in time... Riding a horse through the Adirondacks leads to deeper insights about the precarious nature of our daily lives... A ski expedition reveals truths about the frightening transitions we all face. The eighteen essays, categorized by season, span the globe, yet they all affirm our connection with nature and with each other. And, somehow, Drotar manages to accomplish this with without ponderous prose or heavy-handing philosophizing. Tuck this book in your backpack for thoughtful reading during your own travels, or keep it on your bedside table to inspire your dreams.

I enjoyed this book immensely. Drotar whisks us around the world in these captivating essays, riding an icebreaker in Finland at one moment, a mountain bike in Wales the next. Every person, every place, every event reveals so much more to Drotar than it does to most of us. Ski runs become metaphors for life's challenges. A night sky helps Drotar discover the planet beneath his feet. The author dances thru time and space in a way that bewitches the reader and enriches his travel experience. Struggles for democracy in Myanmar--and America--are reflected in a prism where time, Zen and Buddhist like, flows backwards. Landowners in the pacific northwest embrace redwoods and a new ethic. His characters come to life on the page: Cowboys at a roundup in Wyoming, rangers with eagle eyes in the Catskills, children in Quito carrying bundles of dignity amidst urban squalor.

Few writers can weave their thoughts and meaning into a travel experience without destroying the tempo or becoming preachy, but Drotar accomplishes both.

Steep Passages took me on a wild ride through nature, exotic places, and fascinating people. There were times when I felt as though I was right along side Drotar, feeling the cool winter wind on my face or tasting the salty sea air. The descriptions in the book are so intensely rich and full of life that at times you can't believe that one person has experienced what so many only dream of. From chapter to chapter, Steep Passages keeps you craving for more and more and in the mean while Drotar's inner messages on life, often make you reflect on whom you are and what you're doing with yours. It's a book that I could read over and over again and each time immerse myself into a scene that many of us only dream about feeling, tasting and believing.

This book was linked and titled as an image for The Alchemist book which sends the viewer here. This book has nothing to do with the Alchemist and is not an image of that book by any means. It is clear that the author is trying to fish bate people over this this book by inappropriate and false means. This does not impress me to even be remotely interested in this book and to think that it suggests spiritual truths?!! I have reported the image as inappropriate and hopefully amazon will delete it. (adding your book cover and the title of the image is your books title and having it link to your book is extremely poor taste, shame on you.)