by Kate Harris
Thanks to my wonderful agent, Stuart Krichevsky, for helping me tease one possible Silk Road out of many and travelling it with me to the end. Deep gratitude to my publisher, Anne Collins, for her faith and enthusiasm. Lynn Henry has been a champion for this book since it landed with her at Knopf Canada, and I don’t know how I got so lucky. I’m grateful to the entire team at Knopf Canada, especially Rick Meier for handling permissions and proofs with skill and aplomb; Five Seventeen for his dazzling design work; and Deirdre Molina and Ruta Liormonas for all they do behind the scenes. I’m especially grateful to my editor, the incomparable Amanda Lewis, who made the writing itself a grand experiment and adventure.
And finally, wild thanks to my parents, brothers, and extended family, who truly believed (feared) I’d make it to Mars. I’d choose a sheep shed with all of you over a new world any day. For Kate Neville, my love is as deep as Sloko Inlet on a late summer day, the wind quiet and the lake calm, paddling home on meltwater, mountain light.
PERMISSIONS
Excerpt from The Writing Life by Annie Dillard © 1989 by Annie Dillard. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
Excerpt from A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit © 2005 by Rebecca Solnit. Used by permission of Penguin Random House Limited.
Quotation from In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje featuring lyrics from “Walking to Bellrock” by Stan Dragland © 1987 by Michael Ondaatje. Reprinted by permission of McClelland & Stewart, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited.
Quotation from Notes from a Bottle Found on the Beach at Carmel by Evan S. Connell © 1962, renewed 1990 by Evan S. Connell from Notes from a Bottle Found on the Beach at Carmel: A Poem. Reprinted by permission of Counterpoint.
Quotation from “The Clearing” by Tomas Tranströmer, translation by Robert Bly © 1962 by Robert Bly from The Half-Finished Heaven: The Best Poems of Tomas Tranströmer. Reprinted by permission of Greywolf Press.
Excerpt from The Anthropology of Turquoise by Ellen Meloy © 2002 by Ellen Meloy. Used by permission of Penguin Random House Limited.
Quotation from “The Swimmer” by John Cheever © 1947 by John Cheever, renewed 2000 by Mary W. Cheever from The Stories of John Cheever. Reprinted by permission of Penguin Random House Limited.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works quoted, consulted, or referred to in the writing of this book.
EPIGRAPHS
“To speak of knowledge…” in Virginia Woolf, The Waves. London: Vintage, 2004.
“How we spend our days…” in Annie Dillard, The Writing Life. New York: Harper Collins, 2009.
“Never to get lost…” in Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost. New York: Penguin, 2006.
“I should like to do…” Ellen Meloy, The Anthropology of Turquoise. New York: Vintage, 2003.
PART ONE
1. MARCO MADE ME DO IT
Thesiger, Wilfred. Arabian Sands. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974.
Cherry-Garrad, Apsley. The Worst Journey in the World. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1997.
Nansen, Fridjof. The First Crossing of Greenland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Service, Robert, Songs of the Sourdough. Toronto: William Briggs, 1908.
David-Néel, Alexandra. My Journey to Lhasa. Boston: Beacon Press, 1993.
Rugoff, Milton. Marco Polo’s Adventures in China. New York: American Heritage Publishing Co., 1964.
Yule, Henry and Cordier, Henri. The Travels of Marco Polo: The Complete Yule-Cordier Edition, Vol I and II. London: Dover Publications, 1993.
Moule, A.C. and Pelliot, Paul. Marco Polo, The Description of the World. New York: Ishi Press, 2010.
Polo, Marco. The Travels. London: Penguin Books: 1974.
2. ROOF OF THE WORLD
“Longing on a large scale…” in Delillo, Don. Underworld. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997.
Harrer, Heinrich. Seven Years in Tibet. New York: Penguin Putnam, 1996.
Hilton, James. Lost Horizon. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1939.
3. NATURAL HISTORY
Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. London: Penguin Classics, 2015.
Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
Darwin, Charles. The Voyage of the Beagle: Charles Darwin’s Journal of Researches. London: Penguin Classics, 1989.
Dillard, Annie. Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters. New York: Harper Perennial, 1988.
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden and Civil Disobedience. New York: Penguin Classics, 1986.
Darwin, Charles. The Autobiography of Charles Darwin: 1809–1882. Edited by Nora Barlow. New York: W.W. Norton, 1993.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Nature and Selected Essays. London: Penguin Classics, 2003.
Workman, Fanny Bullock and Workman, William Hunter. Two Summers in the Ice-Wilds of Eastern Karakoram. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1916.
“indescribably grand…” Longstaff, Thomas in “Glacier Exploration in the Eastern Karakoram,” The Geographical Journal 35 (1910): 639.
Ali, Saleem. Peace Parks: Conservation and Conflict Resolution. Boston: MIT Press, 2007.
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live…” in Joan Didion, The White Album. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009.
PART TWO
4. UNDERCURRENTS
Ascherson, Neal. Black Sea. New York: Vintage, 2007.
Wood, Frances. Did Marco Polo Go to China? Boulder: Westview Press, 1996.
Calvino, Italo. Invisible Cities. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013.
“heartbroken, wandering, wordless…” in Barks, Coleman. The Essential Rumi. New York: HarperCollins, 2010.
5. THE COLD WORLD AWAKENS
“ ‘Trust me, there is order here…’ ” in Ondaatje, Michael. In the Skin of a Lion. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2011.
“What is the colour of wisdom…” in Connell, Evan S. Notes from a Bottle Found on the Beach at Carmel. Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2013.
“polar exploration is…” in Cherry-Garrad, Apsley. The Worst Journey in the World. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1997.
Bildstein, Keith L. Migrating Raptors of the World: Their Ecology and Conservation. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006.
Lilienthal, Otto. Practical Experiments in Soaring. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Annual Report, 1894.
“comical appearance of flying…” in Herlihy, David. Bicycle: The History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.
“It was not uncommon…” in Crouch, Tom. The Bishop’s Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright. New York: W.W. Norton, 2003.
“Names are only the guests…” from Hsu Yu quoted in Domanski, Don. All Our Wonder Unavenged. London: Brick Books, 2007.
6. ANGLE OF INCIDENCE
Herlihy, David V. Bicycle: The History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.
de Waal, Thomas. The Caucasus: An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
“In the middle of the forest…” in Tranströmer, Tomas. The Half-Finished Heaven: The Best Poems of Tomas Tranströmer. Translated by Robert Bly. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2001.
“keenest among the old at reading birdflight…” in Homer, The Odyssey. Translated by Robert Fitzgerald. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998.
7. BORDERLANDIA
“The creation of very particular human cultures…” in Cronon, William. Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature. New York: W.W. Norton, 1995.
“When we try to pick out anything by itself…” in John Muir, Nature Writings. New York: The Library of America, 1997.
“Each dying in its own way…” in Babel, Isaac. The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel. New York: W.W. Norton, 2002.
“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall…” from “Mending Wall” in Frost, Robert. The Poetry of Robert Frost: The Collected Poems, Complete and Unabridged. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2002.
“exactitude is not truth,�
�� in Matisse, Henri. Matisse on Art. Edited by Jack Flam. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.
PART THREE
8. WILDERNESS/WASTELAND
Berger, John. Selected Essays. New York: Knopf Doubleday, 2008.
“You cannot fill the Aral with tears…” Muhammad Salih as quoted in Weinthal, Erika. State Making and Environmental Cooperation: Linking Domestic and International Politics in Central Asia. Boston: MIT Press, 2002.
Nelson, Craig. Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon. New York: Penguin, 2009.
Sagan, Carl. Murmurs of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record. New York: Random House, 1983.
Smith, Andrew. Moondust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth. London: Bloomsbury, 2006.
Sagan, Carl. Contact. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997.
Wallace, Alfred Russell. My Life: A Record of Events and Opinions. London: Chapman & Hall, 1908.
“Surely, for this great and holy purpose…” Alfred Russell Wallace’s letter to The Daily News, February 6, 1909: 4, http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wallace/S670.htm.
“The day was lovely…” in Cheever, John. Collected Stories and Other Writings. New York: Library of America, 2009.
Lowell, Percival. Mars and Its Canals. New York: Macmillan, 1906.
Wallace, Alfred Russell. Is Mars Habitable? New York: Macmillan, 1907.
9. THE SOURCE OF A RIVER
Hopkirk, Peter. The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2006.
10. A MOTE OF DUST SUSPENDED IN A SUNBEAM
“Thus, a wēijī is indeed a genuine crisis…” Victor Mair, Pīnyīn.info, www.pinyin.info/chinese/crisis.html.
“What country’s government would not protect…” Xu Jianrong, quoted in Michael Wines, “To Protect an Ancient City, China Moves to Raze It,” The New York Times, May 28, 2009, www.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/world/asia/28kashgar.html.
“exposing the heinous reactionary…” and “All villages become fortresses, and everyone is a watchman,” “China: No End to Tibet Surveillance Program,” Human Rights Watch, www.hrw.org/news/2016/01/18/china-no-end-tibet-surveillance-program.
“I am sometimes afraid…” in Darwin, Charles. The Correspondence of Charles Darwin: 1821–1836, vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
“Look again at that dot…” in Sagan, Carl. Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. New York: Random House, 1994.
Hinton, David. Hunger Mountain: A Field Guide to Mind and Landscape. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2012.
Shakya, Tsering. Dragon in the Land of Snows: The History of Modern Tibet since 1947. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.
Iyer, Pico. The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. New York: Knopf Doubleday, 2008.
“The very same thought…” from Orgyen Tobgyal Rinpoche’s teaching, August 17, 1999, www.rigpawiki.org/index.php?title=Lungta.
“the inhabitants of the city…” from van Schaik, Sam. Tibet: A History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011.
“The Tibetans saw giant ‘birds’ approach X…” Jianglin Li quoted in Siling, Luo, “A Writer’s Quest to Unearth the Roots of Tibet’s Unrest,” The New York Times, August 14, 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/08/15/world/asia/china-tibet-lhasa-jianglin-li.html.
11. ROAD’S END
“A mountain always practises in every place…” from Dōgen Zenji quoted in Snyder, Gary. Practice of the Wild. Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2004.
“absolutely unmixed attention…” in Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace. New York: Putnam, 1952.
“Maybe I will be able to go beyond my dream…” in Moitessier, Bernard. The Long Way. New York: Sheridan House, 1995.
KATE HARRIS is a writer with a knack for getting lost. Winner of the 2012 Ellen Meloy Desert Writers Award, her work has been featured in The Walrus, Canadian Geographic Travel, and The Georgia Review, and cited in Best American Essays and Best American Travel Writing. Named one of Canada’s top modern-day explorers, her journeys edging the limits of nations, endurance, and sanity have taken her to all seven continents. She lives off-grid in Atlin, BC, as often as possible.
www.kateharris.ca