Books like Mountains of the mind by Robert Macfarlane

Bill Bryson humorously chronicles a two–person hike along the Appalachian Trail, mixing lively anecdotes with insightful looks at its history, ecology, and the people who live along the route.

Eyewitness account of the 1996 Mount Everest tragedy, detailing the climbers’ perilous ascent, descent, and the catastrophic events that shaped the deadliest season in the mountain’s history.

Explore the life and work of environmentalist and writer Edward Abbey, who spent the 1950s as a park ranger in the American Southwest.

Journeying through Nepal’s Dolpo highlands, Peter Matthiessen and biologist George Schaller track the elusive snow leopard while exploring Buddhist spirituality and Himalayan wilderness.

Robert Macfarlane explores Britain and Ireland’s remaining wild places, journeying by foot, hand, and rope across cliff‑tops, ancient meadows, and untamed woods to ask whether true wilderness still exists here.

Sir Ernest Shackleton’s first‑hand diary of the 1914‑17 Imperial Trans‑Antarctic Expedition, detailing the Endurance’s crushing by ice, the crew’s nine‑month ordeal on drifting ice, and their daring survival against the polar wilderness.

"Landmarks is a book about the power of language - 'strong style, single words' - to shape our sense of place. It is both a field guide to the literature the author loves (Nan Shepherd, Roger Deakin and many more), and a 'word-hoard', gathering an astonishing archive of place-terms from old Norse to Anglo-Romani, living Norman to Hebridean Gaelic. Over the book's course, via its chapters, its glossaries and surprise of its postscript - we come to realize that words, well used, are not just a means to describe landscape, but also a way to know it, and to love it"--from publisher.

Alexander Mackenzie was the first man to cross continental North America, a trip he accomplished by canoe in 1793 -- twelve years before Lewis and Clark. Mackenzie’s journal of his explorations appeared in 1801.Both the Lewis and Clark and the Mackenzie expeditions were conceived as waterborne explorations and owed their strategy to the French explorers, who had proposed, sixty years earlier, that the North American continent could be crossed by going west on either the Saskatchewan or the Missouri, and then linking up with the unidentified "River of the West."Acting on this overly-simple thesis, Mackenzie took the fur traders’ route along the Saskatchewan and found his way over to the Fraser, and thence by an Indian trail to the coast. Mackenzie had an amazingly naive attitude about the wilderness around him and the proper way one should interact with it. But somehow his Dudley Doright personality worked:"My tent was no sooner pitched, than I summoned the Indians together, and gave each of them about four inches of Brazil tobacco, a dram of spirits, and lighted the pipe...I informed them that I had heard of their misconduct, and was come among them to inquire into the truth of it. I added also that it would be an established rule with me to treat them with kindness, if their behavior should be such as to deserve it; but at the same time, that I should be equally severe if they failed in those returns which I had a right to expect from them. I then presented them with a quantity of rum, which I recommended to be used with discretion, and then added some tobacco, as a token of peace. They, in return, made me the fairest promises; and,having expressed the pride they felt on beholding me in their country, took their leave."It seemed as if his handful of men were often on the verge of mutiny. At least one of his guides deserted him. They found a new one:"About midnight a rustling noise was heard in the woods which created a general alarm, and I was awakened to be informed of the circumstance, but heard nothing...At two in the morning the sentinel informed me, that he saw something like a human figure creeping along on all-fours about fifty paces above us...it proved to be an old, grey-haired, blind man, who had been compelled to leave his hiding-place by extreme hunger, being too infirm to join in the flight of the natives to whom he belonged."Mackenzie fed the old man, then drafted the blind Indian as his guide. The party groped its way westward.Mackenzie's route to the Pacific Ocean proved too difficult for others to follow, but this does not diminish the value of this great expedition across wild America.

One of the great works of mountaineering literature- long out of print and now reissued with a new introduction by Joe Simpson.The enthralling account, by the leader of the French expedition, of the first conquest of Annapurna - at that time, and at more than 8000 metres, the highest mountain ever climbed. It is a story of breathtaking courage and determination against appalling odds. In records of mountaineering, in tales of human endeavour, there is nothing so unforgettable as the account of the descent by the triumphant but frost-bitten men, after the monsoon had broken, through the flooded valleys of Nepal.As well as an introduction by Joe Simpson, this new edition includes 16 pages of photographs, which provide a remarkable visual record of this legendary expedition.

A non‑fiction account of K2’s treacherous history, detailing record statistics, major expeditions and the personal risks faced by climbers, written by renowned mountaineer Ed Viesturs.