Eric Newby

I read today in the New York Times of the death of Eric Newby and recalled one of my most enjoyable weekends.  That memory dates from 1991 when I lived in Duluth, Minnesota.  It was Halloween, a Thursday, and the first snow of the season had begun that afternoon.  When I left my office at 9:00 that evening about four inches of snow lay on the ground.  The next morning the telephone rang at 6:30—it was an undergraduate who worked in my lab.  She had called to say that classes had been canceled so she wouldn’t be at work.  Why, I wondered with drowsy frustration, couldn’t she have waited until at least 7:00 to call instead of getting me out of bed?  The radio reported that nine inches of snow had fallen and a foot was expected by the end of the day.  DJs on the radio interviewed a newspaper boy about the problems he’d had delivering papers that morning.  Despite the closure of campus for the day, I walked down the hill to work—when I left that evening after dark, the snow was shin deep except in the drifts where it covered my thighs. It snowed still when I went to bed.

The next morning I found four feet of snow drifted against the sliding doors to my deck.  A high ridge ran down the middle of the driveway.  Cars were snow hills.  A larch, still with ochre leaves, had become a white bottle-brush.  I watched the falling snow through the bay window of my living room, watched through the day from my warm couch, while I read Eric Newby’s A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush.  Newby was a buyer of women’s fashions, and the book began in London at the showing of the 1956 Spring Collection in a blizzard.  He bagged the job for the idea of climbing a 25,000 feet high peak in Afghanistan’s Hindu Kush.  Newby had not climbed mountains so he went to Wales for a weekend of training before departing for Asia.  Eric Newby must have loved pathos for he built his story upon layer after layer of ill-preparation and beleaguered failure, but he told it with adventure and well-stated, if subtle, humor.  I laughed out loud through the day, page after page.  It was beautiful travel writing.  I read the book in one sitting, taking breaks only to fix tea and to watch the snow fall.  It remains one of the most wonderful, vivid days in my memory.

When I finished the book at the end of the afternoon, the radio reported the snow depth was at 36 inches and the wind chill at -20º.  Hard, gusting wind through the day had drifted the snow to five feet deep in my driveway.  I went out in the evening in the intense cold to begin shoveling.  I could hear the scrape of other shovels and the groan of snow plows. The cloudy sky was brightly lit by street lights that reflected from the snow.  It was a glowing night.  The snow had stopped.  I thought about Eric Newby stopped at an ice fall at an elevation of 18,000 feet in the Hindu Kush.  Lacking experience with ice, Newby took from his pack a book on technical climbing and followed its instructions on chopping steps—“there was nothing else to do,” Newby wrote—“It was far harder work than I had imagined . . .”

*

The radio this evening forecast that we would have our first snow flurries tonight on the hills and valleys of eastern Washington. I’d like to reread Newby’s A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush. Perhaps tonight’s snow will be deeper and longer than expected.  It’s a short walk to my wood pile, and a day before the fireplace with tea and the great pleasure of Newby’s story-telling would be welcome.

Comments

[Clare]

Ah, another book to add to my list. Wonderful memory larry, as always. Now for some rosehip tea :-)

[larry]

Clare--Newby's 'Short Walk' is well worth your list--a good book for a day in a long winter. Hope your cup of rosehip tea was refreshing--I recommend you spice it with a fresh gooseberry or two!

[j b robb]

I have just finished
Newby's "Short Walk" and immediately went on line to learn what I could about him. This book was filled with great charm and delight for me. Of course, I wanted to meet him. He and I are the same age. I was born in 1920. I was saddened to learn that he died last year. Thank you for writing about your experience. jb robb.
PS: I was serving in the Pacific during WW II while he was a prisoner of war. jbr

[larry]

JB, thanks for your note. One would like to look back and have lived a life as exuberant and full as Newby's. His "Short Walk" was delightful to read, and it remains an inspiration.