(Chicago Review Press, 260 pp.)
These collected profiles of past and present women adventurers from around the world illustrate the diversity of their backgrounds and pursuits. One, Marianne North of Great Britain, spent 20 years traveling around the globe in the latter 1800s painting plants and animals. Among the modern explorers is Argentina’s Constanza Ceruti, whose love of scaling lofty peaks is evident in the following excerpt.
“After her first trek in the high mountains of Patagonia, Constanza [Ceruti] devoted her life to exploring high places. She climbed one mountain after another. After perfecting her mountaineering skills, she ascended Mount Aconcagua. At 22,841 feet it is the highest peak in the Americas as well as the tallest mountain in the Southern Hemisphere. Next, Constanza summited Mount Pissis, the Earth’s second highest volcano, becoming the first woman to do so. Unlike many mountaineers who climb primarily to reach the summit, Constanza climbs in search of past cultures, which she looks for on the mountainsides as well as at the summits. As Constanza learned about how indigenous mountain cultures revere high places, she strove to climb reverently. For Constanza, climbing became as much a spiritual experience as it was a physical and scientific exercise.”
