topic:"Women" found 3 records - Research Collections - Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies

Abstract: As a teenager, Kate Harris realized that the career she most craved—that of a generalist explorer, equal parts swashbuckler and metaphysician—had gone extinct. From her small-town home in Ontario, it seemed as if Marco Polo, Magellan and their like had long ago mapped the whole earth. So she vowed to become a scientist and go to Mars. Well along this path, Harris set off by bicycle down a short section of the fabled Silk Road with her childhood friend Mel Yule. This trip was just a simulacrum of exploration, she thought, not the thing itself—a little adventure to pass the time until she could launch for outer space. But somewhere in between sneaking illegally across Tibet, studying the history of science and exploration at Oxford, and staring down a microscope for a doctorate at MIT, she realized that an explorer, in any day and age, is by definition the kind of person who refuses to live between the lines. Forget charting maps, naming peaks, leaving footprints on another planet: what she yearned for was the feeling of soaring completely out of bounds. And where she'd felt that most intensely was on a bicycle, on a bygone trading route. So Harris quit the laboratory and hit the Silk Road again with Yule, this time determined to bike it from beginning to end. Weaving adventure and deep reflection with the history of science and exploration, Lands of Lost Borders explores the nature of limits and the wildness of a world that, like the self and like the stars, can never be fully mapped. (from Kate Harris' website)

Contents: Marco made me do it: North America -- Roof of the world: Tibetan Plateau -- Natural history: England and New England -- Undercurrents: Black Sea -- The cold world awakens: Lesser Caucasus -- Angle of incidence: Greater Caucasus -- Borderlandia: Caspian Sea -- Wilderness/wasteland: Ustyurt Plateau and Aral Sea Basin -- The source of a river: Pamir Knot -- A mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam: Tarim Basin and Tibetan Plateau -- Road's end: Indo-Gangetic Plain and Greater Himalaya.

Notes: Banff Mountain Film Festival 2018 finalist for Adventure Travel

ISBN: 9780062839343

Accession Number: AC639

Call Number: G530 L36 H37

Collection: Alpine Club of Canada Library

URL Notes: Kate Harris' website including publication information

Websites

http://www.kateharris.ca/

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Our trip around the world

https://archives.whyte.org/en/permalink/catalogue25248

Medium: Library - Book (including soft-cover and pamphlets)

Published Date: 2020

Author: Belczyk, Renate

Publisher: [Victoria, British Columbia] : Rocky Mountain Books Ltd.

Call Number: 02 B41o

1 website

Author: Belczyk, Renate

Responsibility: Renate Belczyk

Publisher: [Victoria, British Columbia] : Rocky Mountain Books Ltd.

Published Date: 2020

Physical Description: 208 pages

Medium: Library - Book (including soft-cover and pamphlets)

Subjects: Travel; Women; Biography

Abstract: A spirited 1950s travelogue that takes the reader around the world during a time when two independent young women travelling alone was considered almost revolutionary. Renate Belczyk was born in Dresden, Germany, in 1932. When she was three years old her family moved to Berlin, where they settled into a small apartment building on the outskirts of the city. It was in this building that she met another adventurous girl, Sigrid, with whom she would travel around the world as young women after the Second World War. Having spent most of their childhood and teenage years climbing trees, swimming, cycling, hiking, and adventuring around Germany the two young women attended a talk by the German writer Heinrich Böll. During his presentation the renowned author suggested to the crowd that they all travel to different countries and make friends with the locals whenever they could, as this would help prevent another war. Renate and Sigrid took this advice to heart, and from that point their adventures together took flight. Starting in 1955 and travelling for three years to England, France, Spain, Portugal, Mexico, Canada, Japan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Egypt, Turkey, Macedonia, and Greece, their adventures together culminated with their joint return to Germany in 1958. In 1959 Renate returned to the Canadian Rockies to work in the backcountry, and in 1960 she married mountaineer Felix Belczyk and settled in Castlegar, BC, where they raised three children. Our Trip Around the World is an endearing snapshot of the postwar era when adventure travel – mountaineering, hiking, hitchhiking, and cycling – was enticing those with adventurous spirits to experience the world like never before. (From publisher's website)

Contents: Cover -- Title Page -- Dedication -- Table of Contents -- Foreword -- Preface -- Chapter 1: Early Years -- Chapter 2: Mexico, 1955-56 -- July 1955 -- September 1955 -- October 1955 -- November 1955 -- December 1955 -- January 1956 -- February 1956 -- March 1956 -- April 1956 -- May 1956 -- June-July 1956 -- Chapter 3: Canada, 1956-57 -- July 1956 -- August 1956 -- September 1956 -- Winter 1956-57 -- Spring 1957 -- May 1957 -- Chapter 4: Japan, 1957 -- May to October, 1957 -- June 1957 -- July 1957 -- Photo Section -- September 1957 -- October 1957 -- Chapter 5: India and Nepal, 1957-58 October 1957 -- November 1957 -- December 1957 -- January 1958 -- Chapter 6: Egypt, Turkey, Greece and Home, 1958 -- February 1958 -- March 1958 -- April 1958 -- May 1958 -- Afterword: A Life of Travel