Tag: Books

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Book Review: The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative

Author: Florence Williams; Reviewer: Brian Goldman

Have you ever wondered what compels hikers and climbers to endure fatigue, insect bites, blisters, and cold? Is there something about immersion in nature that we inherently need? Are we collectively suffering a “nature deficit disorder?” Do some countries have better national policies of improving health by providing access to nature? Florence Williams, author of The Nature Fix, traveled the world to uncover studies in neuroscience, medicine, and big data about the restorative influence of nature on our physical and mental health. In short, informative, and witty chapters, Williams displays a gift for clearly explaining the science behind nature’s positive effects on our brain and health.

In Japan, where they’ve coined the word karoshi—death from overwork—the government is creating over one hundred forest therapy sites for people to engage in shinrin yoku, forest bathing. Williams visited Yoshifume Miyazaki, a physical anthropologist whose research found that when people take forest walks, there is a 12 percent decrease in cortisol (your body’s main stress hormone), a 7 percent decrease in sympathetic nerve activity (which governs fight-or-flight behavior), a 1.4 percent decrease in blood pressure, a 6 percent decrease in heart rate, and a better mood and lower anxiety. In a country with a high suicide rate and tsukin jigoku—commuting hell—where workers shove you into a train during rush hour, nearly 25 percent of the population now walk forest therapy trails yearly. As Miyazaki explains, “we’ve spent 99.9 percent of our time in nature, a feeling of comfort can be achieved if our rhythms are synchronized with those of the environment.”

Immunologist Qing Li, a collaborator with Miyazaki, has studied natural killer (NK) immune cells, a type of white blood cell that can send self-destruct messages to tumors and virus-infected cells. Sure enough, three days of hiking boosted these NK cells by 40 percent for an entire week. Although not completely confirmed, Li suspects that NK cells are boosted by phytoncides, otherwise known as “nice tree smells.” These are essential oils emitted by evergreens and other trees. Li himself uses a humidifier with cypress oil in his house since he found that those who sleep inhaling a cypress scent experience a 20 percent increase in NK cells and less fatigue.

In Korea, where forest bathing is called salim yok, the Forest Agency has established dozens of healing forests with dominant cypress trees. Scientists in Korea confirm the medicinal aspects of phytoncides as antibacterial and capable of “reducing stress 53 percent by lowering levels of cortisol and blood pressure 5–7 percent.” The soil also contains geosmin, which holds streptomyces bacteria, a key to many antibiotics. Two other studies looked at eleven- and twelve-year olds who suffer from “borderline technology addiction” (BTA). After two days in the forest, researchers found lower cortisol levels and improvement in self-esteem. Armed with this research, Korea has planned a National Forest Plan “to realize a green welfare state, where the entire nation enjoys well-being” through work and school programs.

In Finland, economist Liisa Tyrvainen tweaked the experimental design of Miyazaki and concluded that Finns have elevated measures of restoration, vitality, and creativity when walking outside, but they must be in nature at least five hours a month. If you’re outside even longer, “you will reach a new level of feeling better and better,” she concluded.

Singapore is considered one of the top “biophilic cities” in the world. Almost half of the country’s 276 square miles are under some sort of green cover. The population has grown by 2 million; however, the percentage of green space has increased from 36 to 47 percent. Although many of these green spaces are gardens, greenhouses, paths with green corridors, and parks with constructed nature, the government’s vision has succeeded in making this country an oasis in SE Asia. Studies have shown that mortality rates are lower near urban parks.

Other positive health effects of nature: Williams uncovered research in Ohio, Singapore and Australia suggesting that being outside in sunlight stimulates the release of dopamine from the retina, which prevents the eyeball from getting too oblong, thus preventing myopia (nearsightedness).

Awe: According to the author, Irish philosopher Edmund Burke may have understood the effect of transcendent experiences in nature. He traipsed the countryside and found that for something to be “awe-inspiring” there must be “vastness of extent” in which our senses find it difficult to make sense of it—which in turn inspires feelings of humility and a more outward perspective. Dacher Keltner and colleagues at UC Berkeley have found that experiencing awe was the only emotion to significantly lower levels of IL-6, a marker for inflammation. Lower levels are better; higher levels are linked to depression and stress. Keltner also suggests that the emotion awe causes us to reinforce and share emotional connections. Ever wonder why you take those pictures on your cell phones and send them to family and friends?

The book continues by showing how military veterans suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) have diminished symptoms when rafting or backpacking, and how exercise and exploratory play among children increases verbal and math ability, lowers impulsivity, and leads to a threefold decrease in Attention Deficit Hyperactivity (ADHD) symptoms.

Could the positive effects of immersion in nature apply to our educational systems? Yes, indeed. The author states that Germany has more than 1,000 forest kindergartens called Waldkindergarten, where students are out in all kinds of weather. In one instance, after a large tree fell during a storm, the teacher launched a nature-based curriculum in which children sawed off branches to make the tree safe for climbing. In so doing, students practiced dexterity, teamwork and learned about cause and effect. In Scandinavia, 10 percent of preschoolers spend their entire days outside. In Finland, students have recess outside 15 minutes out of every hour. In contrast, two-thirds of the students in this country are Vitamin D (the sunshine vitamin) “insufficient.” In both the U.K. and the U.S.A., rickets, a disease caused by a lack of Vitamin D, has quadrupled in the past 15 years.

The Nature Fix confirms that even small amounts of exposure to the natural world can improve our creativity and enhance our mood. Williams shows how time in nature is not superfluous but is essential to our species. As our modern lives shift dramatically indoors, spending more time in nature is more urgent than ever. As the author succinctly states, “Go outside, often, sometimes in wild places. Bring friends or not. Breathe.”

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Book Review: Wild Adventures We Have Known by Jolene Unsoeld


by Louis F. Reichardt

The name Unsoeld resonates among Americans of my generation because of Willi Unsoeld’s legendary West Ridge ascent, traverse, and bivouac on Mt. Everest with Tom Hornbein in 1963. Completed shortly after President John Kennedy’s speech committing the United States to reach the moon by the end of the decade, this mountaineering achievement captured our imaginations at a time when optimism about our country and the world was high. Written by Jolene Unsoeld, Willi’s wife, with extensive text transcribed from her husband’s myriad lectures, this book indeed describes two lives, each full of adventures as wild as advertised. For those interested in the remarkable careers of both Willi and Jolene, the text more than meets expectations. The pictures of family, mountains, and peoples of distant lands are well chosen and provide attractive and welcome supplements to the author’s text. Although Willi sadly died in 1979 in an avalanche on Mt. Rainier, he lectured so frequently that the book provides innumerable, vivid, first-person examples of his humor and adventurousness. The book is consequently written as much by Willi as by Jolene.

Jolene & Willi engagement photo.

From reading this book, my single most vivid impression is how much as Americans we have changed from our shared senses of purpose, trust in the value of government, and optimism that infused our citizenry during the decades after World War II before trust in government was shattered by the Vietnam War and Nixon presidency. The text describes the life of a family who lived when America built bridges to the world, the civil rights movement pushed us towards the original vision of our Declaration of Independence, and America initiated with little controversy bold and imaginative projects such as the Peace Corps and placing a man on the moon.

The text traces Willi’s and Jolene’s family histories from before their births during the Great Depression through their early adventures as individuals and a couple. This review can recapitulate only a tiny subset of the many images the book captures of their lives. As one example, using Willi’s lecture notes, it describes Willi’s early infatuation with climbing, including his first fall, happily only about 20 feet. Shortly after, he enlisted in the army in 1944 as a seventeen-year-old, too young for active duty, but old enough to experience basic training, including crawling through mud under fire of live ammunition. With a strong sense of immortality, he used a weekend pass while stationed in Kentucky to drive to Colorado where he completed a challenging technical ascent of the East Face of Longs Peak, somehow managing to hitchhike back to Kentucky before the 5 p.m. Monday deadline.

Camp on Nanda Devi.

Equally fascinating is Willi’s description of his hitchhiking by every imaginable mode of transportation around the world, leaving the U.S. with $300 in his pocket and returning with $250. Along the way, he completed several worthy ascents in the Alps, including a solo ascent of the Matterhorn, met several of Europe’s most illustrious climbers, and made an unsuccessful attempt on the then unclimbed Himalayan peak, Nilkanta. As Jolene summarizes, “one of the most important things Willi came back with is “… that people the world over are made of pretty much the same stuff. The best way of understanding the fellow on the other side of the world is to go live with him on his level,” truth that today faces challenge from the highest levels of our government.

Jolene’s early life was equally interesting and included two years in Shanghai shortly after the Japanese invasion of China. Happily, the family returned to the U.S. before Pearl Harbor and escaped internment. This international experience gave Jolene a very similar philosophy and sense of our shared humanity that Willi acquired in India.

Willi and Jolene met as students at Oregon State College, where both escaped frequently to the Cascades, and were married in 1951. The book’s descriptions of their subsequent life together include adventures in the Tetons, a shared first ascent of the North Face of Grand Teton, the fulfillment of their plan to have four children, and the subsequent close encounters of Jolene and her young children with the bears that shared the Teton campgrounds. Willi’s education during this period included completion of a BS in Physics and a doctorate in Philosophy and Comparative Religions. Within three years of their marriage, Willi’s mountaineering adventures expanded to Makalu in 1954 and Masherbrum in 1960. Jolene describes candidly the challenges this posed to a marriage in which one partner was left for months of uncertainty with young children after which they were reunited with a wealth of unshared, but rich experiences.

Willi & Devi in the North Cascades.

My favorite section of the book is one that describes their lives together in Nepal from 1962 to 1965, where Willi was first Deputy Director and then Director of the Peace Corp. The story of his recruitment by Bob Bates, the first Nepalese Peace Corp Director, is simply hilarious; an ascent of Glacier Peak in the North Cascades with only one crampon; a tent pole as an ice axe; and a long john top as a substitute for pants. At that time, Sargent Shriver, President Kennedy’s inlaw and national Peace Corp Director, interviewed all candidates and Willi’s interview took place during a flight to Chicago with Shriver, on such short notice that Willi had no chance to take luggage.

The first cohort of Peace Corp volunteers embarked with the Bates and the Unsoelds together for Nepal and spent the first year improvising at they learned how to make a difference in the lives of citizens of a foreign country with which Americans had little prior experience. The book brought back to me the joy and wonder I felt during my own first visit to Nepal and its wonderful people in 1969. Nothing I write in this review can do justice to Jolene’s descriptions of their experiences there.
Somehow, Willi’s full-time job as Deputy Director in Nepal did not dissuade Sargent Shriver from granting him leave to join Norman Dyhrenfurth’s 1963 Expedition to Mt. Everest where Tom Hornbein’s and Willi’s first ascent of the West Ridge and bivouac created a legend.

Jolene’s text includes descriptions by Willi of this expedition and his exceedingly long recovery from frostbite and hepatitis that I was not previously aware of. More importantly, the text focuses on the challenges of separation when one’s partner is left with small children in a foreign land. Willi’s and Jolene’s letters to each other provide an intimate portrait of the expedition and life in Nepal complemented by superb photography of the mountains, expedition, and Nepalese people.

After Everest, Willi assumed the directorship of the Nepalese Peace Corp and subsequently a less satisfying year’s assignment with the America’s Nepalese AID mission. The book describes their return to the States and difficulties of readjustment where Willi became Deputy Director of Outward Bound, responsible for overseeing activities at the first five American sites. Most interestingly, it describes the creation of Outward Bound by the German Jewish educator Kurt Hahn, which he started in the UK to enhance through “intense mini-life experiences, young people’s … capacity to cope with life,” a program designed to increase survival of sailors whose ships had been torpedoed by German submarines. Willi and Jolene clearly adopted Kurt’s philosophy that the “intense personal challenges at Outward Bound force students to recognize … their fears … in order to perform well … on a mountain, or in life.”

Following Outward Bound, both Unsoelds were involved in the State of Washington’s visionary creation of Evergreen State College, partly at least to deal with the unrest resulting from the Vietnam War and Civil Rights Movement, where Willi integrated his life’s experiences into teaching the next generation.

This was the period when Jolene took her first steps toward what became a remarkable career of public service as a Washington state legislator and three term Member of Congress. Only the first tentative steps in this career are described in this book, but the ethics and commitment that must have inspired the confidence of her constituents are present throughout.

The final chapters of the book focus on their children’s adventures when it was still safe for Americans to travel overland to Nepal, before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and revolution in Iran. These adventures culminated with Willi’s and their daughter Devi’s return to the Himalaya for an attempt on Nanda Devi, a peak that Willi first saw on his unsuccessful expedition to Nilkanta in 1949. Devi, the mountain’s namesake, died unexpectedly high on this mountain. The book describes the deepest emotions of Willi, Jolene, and their children as they coped with this loss, a downside of releasing a child to live a life of risk. For me, a member of this expedition who continues to think about the “what ifs” that might have altered this outcome, this was the most personally moving section of the book. The family’s photos of Devi, the mountains and the local people are beautiful.

Their tributes to her life will resonate with every reader. Finally, much more briefly, Jolene addresses her family’s loss of Willi during a winter climb on Mt. Rainier in 1979.

The book describes a family that has lived lives full of hope, optimism, and achievement, but has also suffered far more than its share of tragedy.

To attempt a summary, this is a book that will interest everyone who enjoys biographies describing lives of exceptional individuals. The text is well written, candid and moving throughout. One suspects that some of the text from Willi’s lectures might have been condensed if he had been able to personally adapt them for this book, but this is a minor quibble. Not every section will have the same appeal for each reader. Some may be more interested in the mountain episodes, others in Nepal, still others in family descriptions, but this should not be a deterrent. The exceptional lives, philosophies and ethics of Willi, Jolene and their children accompanied by exceptional photography make reading this tome a wonderful experience. Jolene is currently working on a description of the more recent stages in her life’s exceptional adventure in politics, including her service as a Congresswoman.

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Honoring Fred Beckey’s Literary Achievements: On Display at The Summit

A display of Beckey’s works at The Summit at Revolution
Hall on Nov. 19.

by Mathew Brock, Mazama Library & Historical Archives Manager
While Fred Beckey may be known by most as the Northwest’s finest and most prolific climber, and a seminal figure in North American mountaineering, focus on his climbing career alone fails to capture his impact on, and contribution, to climbing. Over the course of seven decades, Fred has published a wide range of books, ranging from local and regional climbing guides, and historical treatises, to gripping personal narratives of his climbing adventures. His Cascade climbing alone provides a broad range of information (including history and geology for and astounding range of peaks, paving the way for countless amateur climbers and adventurers.

Fred Beckey begins his literary career with the Climber’s Guide to the Cascade and Olympic Mountains of Washington, published in 1949 by the American Alpine Club, the first comprehensive guide to Northwest peaks. After approaching the Seattle-based Mountaineers, the Alpine Club agreed to release a few thousand copies for a flat fee. A revised edition, as well as a supplement, followed in 1953, and again in 1960. In 1965 the Mountaineers published Beckey’s and Eric Bjornstad’s Guide to Leavenworth Rock Climbing Areas. The Challenge of the North Cascades followed in 1969 and is often praised as his best work. The book chronicles his more than three decades of climbing and exploring the North Cascade peaks and countless first ascents (his bold second ascent of the formidable Mt. Waddington as a teen (“used felt pullovers on tennis shoes”) being notable. Four years later, Beckey published the first volume of the Cascade Alpine Guide, Columbia River to Stevens Pass. Volume Two, Stevens Pass to Rainy Pass followed in 1977, and Volume Three, Rainy Pass to Fraser River, in 1981. The series became known affectionately as the “Beckey Bible,” or simply, the “Beckey.” Now in its third edition, the books remain as popular as ever. Between Vols. One and Two, Beckey published the Darrington & Index Rock Climbing Guide in 1976.

In 1999 Becky and long-time guide Alex Van Steen published Climbing Mount Rainier, highlighting fifty alternate routes to the summit. In 2003 Beckey finished his most expansive project to date, the 563-page Range of Glaciers. Published by the Oregon Historical Society Press, the books is a comprehensive accounting of the nineteenth-century exploration and survey of the Northern Cascade Range. Beckey traveled widely in researching the book, visiting archives and libraries across the United States and Canada. In 2011 Patagonia Books published Fred Beckey’s 100 Favorite North American Climbs, a coffee-table-sized magnum opus. The book, filled with hand-drawn topos, photographs, narrative description, and plenty of notes, chronicles Beckey’s detailed knowledge of the mountains and climb routes he knows and loves.

Fred Beckey’s body of literary work is amazing and, unfortunately, often overlooked. His decades- long effort to document and share, in print, his experiences and travels are truly remarkable and represent an absolutely critical contribution to the Northwest climbing and exploration canon.

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Of Mountains and Men: An Extraordinary Journey to Explore Why Some People Feel the Irresistible Urge to Climb Mountains

Book written by Mateo Cabello. Review by Sue Griffith


Fresh off the Haute Route, Mateo Cabello stumbled upon the Mountaineers’ Cemetery in the garden of Zermatt’s St. Mauritius Church. There, he was drawn to a small, bronze plaque commemorating the 1948 deaths of three friends while climbing the Matterhorn. Inexplicably moved by the memorial, Cabello wonders what it is that compels people to climb mountains—particularly where death is imaginable—and why he has never felt a longing to do so. In Of Mountains and Men: An Extraordinary Journey to Explore why Some People Feel the Irresistible Urge to Climb Mountains, Cabello examines the short lives of the three young climbers in an effort to find his answer.

A political economist by trade and self-described hill-walker, Of Mountains and Men is Cabello’s first book. Because he is not a climber and has never summited a mountain, the author brings an impartial perspective to the task. He digs deep into the archives of the Oxford University Mountaineering Club where the climbers had been members while students, connects with surviving family and friends of the three men, and retraces some of their steps while celebrating his own love of mountains. Cabello interviews accomplished climbers and tackles an impressive list of climbing and mountaineering literature, ranging across time from Leslie Stephen’s The Playground of Europe to Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air. In the process, he examines his motivations for writing the book and for writing it the way he did. Part memoir in this sense, the author reveals his own feelings about climbing while also searching for a more universal truth.

Rejecting the idea of mountaineers as larger-than-life conquerors, Cabello zeroes in on the human side of climbing. His book is a study not of those single-minded climbers bent on claiming records, but rather the story of a trio of talented young men who shared a love of mountains and were drawn together by their zest for life. Climbing was just one of the things they did, albeit an important one. In that sense, mountaineering may simply be the search for one’s own soul. “Climbers and mountaineers,” Cabello writes, “go to mountains in the hope of measuring themselves against the most powerful rivals that nature may offer. And they do it, not despite the risks that it involves, but because the risks are an inherent part of the joy of being measured.”

In the end, Cabello never quite finds his answer. He concludes, correctly I believe, that trying to define precisely why people climb is a pointless exercise—the reasons are as diverse as the people who climb. The mountains call to some people while others never hear the call. Cabello is sure about one thing, however. The important story is not about how climbers die but rather how they lived. Climbing is about life.

Read the book for its survey of mountaineering literature, to help articulate your own reasons for climbing, or to enjoy the story of three inspiring young men who celebrated living by seeking mountain tops.

Cabello, M. (2016). Of Mountains and Men: An Extraordinary Journey to Explore why Some People Feel the Irresistible Urge to Climb Mountains. United Kingdom: Oxford Alpine Club.