The Ice Cave: A Womanas Adventures from the Mojave to the Antarctic

In this series of essays on one woman's relationship with wilderness and the world, Bledsoe explores fear, exhilaration and will as she bikes mountain tracks seeking mountain lions, encounters wolves in Alaska, wrestles with the lure of summits buried in unexpected snow. Seeking a healing solitude she backpacks alone into the wilderness and finds the scariest animal of all - hunters with whiskey. She explores an intimate, harrowing fear in the Mojave, terrorized by mysterious lights. And faces her fear of water on a working/sailing vacation with her longtime lover. While Bledsoe's evocation of nature and solitude is vivid and intense, the most involving essays are those exploring human conflict. Moments of high comedy run up against fear-born anger in Bledsoe's sailing tale. Expecting sun-drenched days on deck, she and Pat arrive to find the boat damaged by a storm, its gaff lashed to the deck. " `That's the gaff?' Surely a part that size was not optional." Island-hopping visions dissolve into days of backbreaking work and belly-clenching fear as storms batter the crippled craft. The best essay - and the longest - is Bledsoe's account of her first trip to Antarctica. Curious and untutored, she has many narrow escapes, inspiring a friend to design a plaque reading "'No, Lucy, no!'" But she gets to see penguins and seals, spends a night in a self-built ice shelter and learns to love a place so inhospitable to humans death is just one small misstep away. (As she has since been back a couple of times since, readers will hope she is planning a longer book on Antarctica). This is an honest - at times wrenchingly so - exploration of a personal relationship with wilderness, adrenaline and endorphins. Bledsoe combines adventure and physical effort with soul-searching and makes a sympathetic connection with the reader. This is a book for anyone who has wondered what people get out of extreme sport and for those who like a bit of human uncertainty with their armchair adventuring. -- Portsmouth Herald