At the Mercy of the River (2005) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit

Write a ridiculously simplified synopsis.

Quotes edit see section history

• “P.24: I chose <John> Murray's anthology of African exploration and nature writing <Wild Africa>. Unlike the Oelschlaeger book, I knew I could read it aloud around the campfire. Its stories of explorers and visitors to Africa might even inspire the five of us on the Lugenda River in a dark and difficult hour. "Wild Africa" seemed eminently useful, a literary emergency kit.Besides, I loved its epigraph. It was from Pliny, writing from the Roman Empire two thousand years ago: "There is always something new coming out of Africa."”

• “P.31: Travelling alone in the African interior, stripped of all things "civilized" and European, was life — life writ large. One moment you could be utterly desolate and empty and broken, and the next brim with fullness and warmth.”

• “P.164: Stand back from this, I told myself. When you get that panicky feeling, stand back and observe what's happening to you.”

• “P.176: For one answer I just had to look to the boats ahead of me where Clinton and Rod — bare-chested, strong-armed — paddled purposefully down the Lugenda. What does a young man do? Or what do many of them do? They roam. I had years of personal experience in the roaming phase. If my experience was any indication, a young man often is not even sure what he's looking for. It could be he's looking for bigger game or for flecks of gold or for a mate more desirable and farther off than those he find in his own little band. I knew all that personally. I knew that a young man is out looking for possibility.”

• “P.197: I had wondered exactly what wilderness is. This, I suddenly knew as I stood hunched and panting on the empty shore, was wilderness. This sense of utter animal nakedness. Absolute vulnerability. I was in the midst of wilderness, and I didn't like it at all.”

• “P.206: The river opened up again. The sun dropped low. It cast the tanned, muscled arms stroking steadily ahead of me in a rich, tawny light. The sky to the north, downstream, took on a hue of deep blue.”

• “P.221: Another beautiful morning. I loved these mornings in the African wilds, the freshness and clarity and possibility of them, in contrast with the sadness and anxiety that could settle in at dusk. We paddled along cheerily and vigorously on the broad, smooth river.”

• “P.240: We are animals on the face of this planet and, like all animals, vulnerable in so many ways. Our animal vulnerability is hidden from us in our civilized cities but not here, not during these essential moments, not when one truly enters the wilderness.”

• “P.241: Tibetan Buddhism, about which I knew from previous travels and readings, reveres all forms of life and believes that the human form is only one incarnation on the way to enlightenment. Taoism, instead of trying to overcome "wild nature," looks to it for metaphors that instruct one in how to follow the Way — such as the image of water flowing around a rock. For literally thousands of years Chinese poets, painters, and thinkers have sought out the wilderness as a place of contemplation. The great Tang Dynasty poet Tu Fu lived in the wilds of the Yangtze River gorges to escape the tumultuous wars of the mid-eighth century A.D.: "Evening colours linger on mountain paths / ...At the cliff's edge, frail clouds stay / All night. Among waves, a lone, shuddering / Moon."”

• “P.263: Was this what they used to call "sublime", a place like this, this sensation? Not beautiful. Sublime was a category that lay beyond beauty, the way this sunbaked streambed leading into the forest lay beyond the human realm.”

• “P.297: In Thoreau I saw a profound — desperate seems too extreme a word for him — need to understand himself or his place in the universe. His tiny place in the universe, as it turned out. But he profoundly grasped that his tiny place in the universe was connected to all other organisms, all other matter.”

First Sentence edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Peter Stark (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 916.799

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Travel › Africa › Mozambique
• Books › Travel › Specialty Travel › Adventure
• Books › Outdoors & Nature › Ecology
• Books › Science › Nature & Ecology