Kev Reynolds has tramped through the Himalayas, the Atlas mountains in Morocco, the Pyrenees and the Alps, and he hopes you'll follow him. Reynolds has written more than 50 guidebooks on hiking, trekking and mountaineering, including the five major trekking regions of Nepal. Now, with half a century of exploration under his belt, Reynolds looks back on his life in the rarefied mountain air.
In a little under 200 pages, Reynolds provides 75 short vignettes of his adventures in the crags of mountains and in the company of people he met along those snowy flanks. Upon finding a monk in the Himalayas, he notes, "The old man swayed gently to the rhythm of his prayers, which filled the room." The gentle nature of the title is a clue; readers shouldn't expect the harrowing alpine adventures of Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air or Joe Simpson's Touching the Void. Instead, these are simple tales of a man on foot quietly exploring the world and, in doing so, discovering a little about himself.
Given there are potentially a finite number of ways to describe a beautiful vista from a chilly summit, the stories can be slightly repetitive. But Reynolds has an undeniable love of the world's peaks and this infatuation is infectious: "We shared a common delight in the slumbering mountains and their gullies, the valley, the chaos of boulders at the foot of the screes...." It just may make readers want to strike out on their own, perhaps with Reynolds's new slim volume shoved in their pack. --Jonathan Shipley, freelance writer