When we’re not outdoors, we get our adventure fix by exploring social media and the web. Sometimes we’re a little too plugged in and browsing adventure reads can turn from minutes to hours. To nourish your own adventure fix, here are some of the best adventure links we’ve discovered this week.
‘Pink Floyd’ Was Born To Be Wild – Escaped Flamingo Still Thriving After 17 Years: A fisherman’s sighting in March confirmed that a flamingo that fled a Kansas zoo in 2005 has defied the odds to live a Pixar-worthy life in the wilds of Texas.
The First Woman to Sail Around the World Was a Cross-Dressing Botanist: Because she was a woman, Jeanne Baret could not sail on a French naval vessel. To get around this, she dressed as a man. Then she presented herself at the dock where Louis Antoine De Bougainville was preparing to embark on the first French circumnavigation of the globe. The voyage was the first by any nation to include a professional naturalist to catalog its discoveries.
At the Ends of the Earth – Why Are We So Obsessed With The Tragedy of Polar Exploration? Ernest Shackleton’s famous ship was finally found last month after 100 years suspended under the sea. One Guardian writer argues that his story speaks to our chaotic lives today.
The legend of ‘One Shot’: April Wadland of Rankin Inlet, Nunavut is now locally known as ‘One Shot’ after hunting her first polar bear on the last tag of the season with a single, perfectly placed bullet. Inuit communities are allocated yearly quotas or ‘tags’ that limit how many polar bears they can hunt.
Antarctic Pioneers
Photo: Shutterstock
Ten Pioneering Women of Antarctica and the Places Named for Them: Most women could not work in Antarctica until the 1970s and 1980s. In the decades since, many outstanding female scientists and explorers have contributed to our understanding of the frozen continent. So much so that their names now appear on a whole host of landmarks.
Adventure Classics
Our Favorite Books and TV Shows About Polar Exploration (and Disaster): If you enjoyed reading about the discovery of the ‘Endurance’ shipwreck, dive deeper into the rich history of daring — and often tragic — polar expeditions with these works of fiction and nonfiction.
The Best Climbing Movies Streaming Online Right Now: There’s a land war in Europe. There’s been a pandemic for two years, and most experts believe it’s still going on. If you’re anything like us, a certain amount of distraction is in order. Here is an incomplete (but very long) list of the best 68 films streaming online right now.
Mountain Literature Classics: 1996 Everest Disaster Trilogy: The 1996 Everest season saw the worst loss of life on the mountain to that date, as a storm at extreme altitude caught several large guided parties with big stakes in success. The survivors wrote three bestselling books — Into Thin Air, The Climb, and Left for Dead. These conflicting accounts work best if read together, argues Ronald Turnbull.
