Cobirders, Coloradan Mark Obmascik's The Big Year featured the contest among Al Levantin, Sandy Komito and Greg Miller to see who could see the greatest number of ABA birds in a single year. It is a terrific read, so good that even non-birders love it. It is funny, and it is truthful, as those of us who have observed both birds and obsessed birders can attest. Mark's latest book is about another quest, climbing Colorado's 14,000' peaks. As a fellow struggler, I'm excited about reading his next book, Halfway to Heaven. I have no commercial interest in Mark or the book. Just passing along something about another person who loves birds and being out in nature. He will be doing a book signing Tuesday, May 12 at 7:30 at the Boulder Book Store and Thursday, May 14, at 7:30 pm at the LoDo Tattered Cover store. See below for more information.
Larry Modesitt Mark Obmascik is the author of The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession, a national bestseller that received five Best of 2004 citations by major media. He was lead writer for the Denver Post team that won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize, and winner of the 2003 National Press Club award for environmental journalism. He lives in Denver with his wife, Merrill Schwerin, and their three sons, Cass, Max, and Wesley. Halfway to Heaven My White-knuckled – and Knuckleheaded – Quest for the Rocky Mountain High By Mark Obmascik Fat, forty-four, father of three sons, and facing a vasectomy, Mark Obmascik would never have guessed that his next move would be up a 14,000-foot mountain. But when his twelve-year-old son gets bitten by the climbing bug at summer camp, Obmascik can’t resist the opportunity for some high-altitude father-son bonding by hiking a peak together. After their first joint climb, addled by thin air, Obmascik decides to keep his head in the cloud and try scaling all 54 of Colorado’s 14,000-foot mountains, known as the Fourteeners – and to finish them in less than one year. The result is Halfway to Heaven, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Obmascik’s rollicking, witty, sometimes harrowing, often poignant chronicle of an outrageous midlife adventure that is no walk in the park, although sometimes it’s A Walk in the Woods – but with more sweat and less oxygen. Half a=2 0million people try climbing a Colorado Fourteener every year, but only 1,200 have reported summiting them all. Can an overweight, stay-at-home dad become No. 1,201? With his ebullient personality and sparkling prose, Obmascik brings us inside the quirky, colorful subculture of mountaineering obsessives who summit these mountains year after year. Honoring his concerned wife’s orders not to climb alone, Obmascik drags old friends up the slopes, some of them lifelong flatlanders tasting thin air for the first time, and lures seasoned Rockies junkies into taking on a huffing, puffing newbie by bribing them with free beer, lunches, and car washes. Among the new friends he makes are an ex-drag racer trying to perform a headstand on every summit, the lead oboe player in a Hebrew salsa band, and a climber with the counterproductive pre-climb ritual of gulping down four beers and a burrito. Though danger is always present – the Colorado Fourteeners have killed as many climbers as Mount Everest – Mark knows his aging scalp can’t afford the hair-raising adventures of Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, and his quest becomes a story of family, friendship, and fraternity. In Obmascik’s summer of climbing, he loses fifteen pounds, finds a few dozen man-dates, and gains respect for the history of these storied mountains (home to cannibalism, gold rushes, shoot-outs, and one of the nation’s most famed religious shrines.) As much about midlife and male bonding as it is about mountains, Halfway to Heaven tells how weekend warriors can survive them all as they reach for those most distant things – the summit of mountains and a teenage son. And as one man exceeds the physical achievements of his youth, he discovers that age – like summit height – is just a number. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Join us at the 2009 Convention in Alamosa: http://cfo-link.org/convention/index.php You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Colorado Birds" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.as/group/cobirds?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
