Underland: A Deep Time Journey
by Robert Macfarlane
Another remarkable non-fiction book, a tour de force of what the earth beneath our feet means to us. From its role in death (burials), to shelter, to extensive hideaways (during times of strife), to myth, how it permeates our language, etc.
He takes us into the cave systems throughout the world, tells of their intrepid explorers (including some ghastly horror stories); how caves were used in war, whether as fortresses or burial shafts down which the enemy were tossed (sometimes living, and not dying right away). Brutal stuff.
Robert does some disturbing shit, going underground to experience stuff firsthand that had me freaking out. Worming through narrow passages beneath Paris, going down a shaft into a nuclear waste storage site, down a vertical melt-hole in a glacier in Antarctica, visiting extensive mining operations beneath the sea off the English coast, a world seed preservation site, neutrino-detection labs at the bottom of mineshafts... Along the way he meets all kinds of oddball people devoted to exploring some aspect of the underland, whether it be underground rivers, invisible cities (most cities have mirrored excavations beneath them, representing the material used to build the city), etc.
Anyway, MacFarlane is a very good writer, and here he walks the walk on his subject far beyond what I'd have the nerve to do.
Highly recommended (though not for the claustrophobic).
by Robert Macfarlane
Another remarkable non-fiction book, a tour de force of what the earth beneath our feet means to us. From its role in death (burials), to shelter, to extensive hideaways (during times of strife), to myth, how it permeates our language, etc.
He takes us into the cave systems throughout the world, tells of their intrepid explorers (including some ghastly horror stories); how caves were used in war, whether as fortresses or burial shafts down which the enemy were tossed (sometimes living, and not dying right away). Brutal stuff.
Robert does some disturbing shit, going underground to experience stuff firsthand that had me freaking out. Worming through narrow passages beneath Paris, going down a shaft into a nuclear waste storage site, down a vertical melt-hole in a glacier in Antarctica, visiting extensive mining operations beneath the sea off the English coast, a world seed preservation site, neutrino-detection labs at the bottom of mineshafts... Along the way he meets all kinds of oddball people devoted to exploring some aspect of the underland, whether it be underground rivers, invisible cities (most cities have mirrored excavations beneath them, representing the material used to build the city), etc.
Anyway, MacFarlane is a very good writer, and here he walks the walk on his subject far beyond what I'd have the nerve to do.
Highly recommended (though not for the claustrophobic).
I'm nobody's pony.