Robert Leonard Reid, a well-known writer on alpinism, delights in the satori-inducing dangers of mountaineering. 'Once on vertical rock in desert country,' he writes in Mountains of the Great Blue Dream, 'I reached for a crack, inserted my fingers, stepped up, and stared into the steely eyes of a rattlesnake coiled two feet from my hand.' And that's just a start, for this fine collection of essays recounts many other death-defying adventures endured in nights spent pinned to rock walls in howling winds, days battling ice storms and uncooperative ropes. But this is not just a book of macho accomplishment on the high peaks: Reid writes affectionately of the mountain landscapes among which he has walked and climbed, lending his book a rare and welcome poetry.

 

Hardcover, DJ, as New.