Word: climber
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...though brother Alfred Gwynne, who fell heir to the bulk of the estate, evened things up somewhat by giving Cornelius another $6,000,000. Cornelius' mother, who made little secret of the fact that she regarded her daughter-in-law as a climber, did nothing to ease Grace into the charmed circle of the elite...
...expedition in the spring of 1950, the victory becomes a literary anticlimax. What is vastly more exciting than the climb is the return trip, the harrowing ordeal-by-nature calculated to shiver the spirit of the toughest armchair explorer. Author Herzog-an engineer by profession, a mountain climber by religion-is no great shakes as a writer. His account of the trip to Nepal, the organization of the expedition, and the search for a route up the mountain sometimes reads like a boy camper's letter to a chum. It is a tribute to the pure terror...
...their real ordeal was yet to come. Throughout the trip to New Delhi, much of it on coolie back, the expedition doctor kept amputating. Without anesthetics and using large shears, he kept snipping until Lachenal had lost all his toes, Herzog all his toes and fingers. When Climber Herzog is asked: "Was it worth it?" he merely smiles. The last words of his book: "There are other Annapurnas in the lives...
...even in daylight they are dim and dull. Only its hearing is keen (its thin ears curl over to keep out insects during sleep), and its bristling whiskers have a superfine sense of touch. On his short legs, the possum meanders in a slow, aimless shuffle. As a climber he shows his greatest skill, using his strong, ratlike tail and the opposing "thumb" on his hind feet to scrabble after autumn persimmons. He cannot hang by his tail as long as legend would have it, but he does "play possum" with stubborn persistence when in danger...
...answer to a persistent question, a famous mountain climber once said, "I climb a mountain climber once said, "I climb a mountain because it's there." An equally presistent question has been, "Why does a man fight bulls?" One looks for the answer in the autobiography of Sidney Franklin, the only American over to become a successful bullfighter. But while the book in an intriguing account of an exciting life, it never satisfies this demand...