Measure of a Mountain
Beauty and Terror on Mount Rainier
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
In The Measure of a Mountain, Seattle writer Bruce Barcott sets out to know Rainier. His method is exploratory, meandering, personal. He begins by encircling it, first by car then on foot. He finds that the mountain is a complex of moss-bearded hemlocks and old-growth firs, high meadows that blossom according to a precise natural timeclock, sheets of crumbling pumice, fractured glaciers, and unsteady magma. Its snow fields bristle with bug life, and its marmots chew rocks to keep their teeth from overgrowing. Rainier rumbles with seismic twitches and jerks some one-hundred-thirty earthquakes annually. The nightmare among geologists is the unstoppable wall of mud that will come rolling down its slopes when a hunk of mountain falls off, as it does every half century (and we're fifty years overdue). Rainier is both an obsession and a temple that attracts its own passionate acolytes: scientists, priests, rangers, and mountain guides. Rainier is also a monument to death: every year someone manages just to disappear on its flanks; imperiled climbers and their rescuers perish on glaciers; a planeload of Marines remains lodged in ice since they crashed into the mountain in 1946. Referred to by locals as simply "the mountain," it is the single largest feature of the Pacific Northwest landscape provided it isn't hidden in clouds. Visible or not, though, it's presence is undeniable.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
High above the domiciles and roadways of Seattle looms Mt. Rainier, a beautiful but forbidding shape that dominates the landscape and draws people of the region to discuss, view, climb and possibly to die in their attempts to understand and tame the volcano. A mixture of first-person narrative and natural history, this book from Seattle Weekly columnist Barcott chronicles the past, present and possible future encounters with this impressive monolith of the Northwest. Barcott is not a cavalier outdoorsman. He describes his attempts to understand the ecology and history of Mt. Rainier with a genuine fear of the harshness and severity of high-altitude climbing, and with wonder at the ecosystems he finds above. A chapter called "Aerial Plankton" details the activities of winter insects living on the snowy slopes of the mountain. "Volcano" describes a scenario in which the mountain does not erupt but collapses, sending millions of cubic meters of mud, water and ice into the surrounding populated areas. Many of these musings take place on the trail, and we share in Barcott's deep happiness and gratitude for a warm shower and dry bed after days on the mountainside. Providing clear information on the heritage, history and fascination this mountain creates, Barcott captures the glowing spirit that surrounds Mt. Rainier and, at times, those who are drawn to it.
