Gloria Steinem goes on my hero list!

My Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem

I have a new hero! Her name is Gloria. Gloria Steinem.
I only read this book because it was the first selection for 
Emma Watson's Feminist Book Club on Goodreads.
Although I find it a bit difficult to participate much in the online discussions due to the many many many participants, I do check in every once in awhile and have found even that to be beneficial! I am grateful to have had the opportunity to read this book and get to know about Ms. Steinem's life and accomplishments, which are by no means trivial! 
And...I learned so very much!

The book opens with a story about the annual motorcycle Rally in Sturgis, South Dakota! (I am only familiar with this due to the fact that my husband is a biker who has been there.) Please. Do not make erroneous assumptions. Ms. Steinem was not there to participate in the rally herself, rather she was simply traveling there for a meeting. When to their surprise, this diverse group of six women find themselves smack dab in the middle of thousands of bikers!

She admits they were initially a bit intimidated, even if not by the presence of 'bikers,' definitely overwhelmed at the vast numbers of them everywhere they looked! She happens upon a couple (man and wife) who are well into their "empty nest" years. The woman describes her transition from riding behind her husband to owning and operating her own motorcycle--a "big gorgeous purple Harley"! According to her, she had to "put [her] foot down" to be able to "[take] the road on my own," and now she and her husband are truly partners and he is quite comfortable with the arrangement and especially her autonomy. Beyond being entertaining, Steinem notes there are lessons to be learned:

What seems to be one thing from a distance is very different close up. (xv)

Sure! Compare seeing thousands of motorcycles and bikers in your immediate environment with getting to know two of those bikers personally. Big difference! My note about this experience: This is the same for any prejudice about any group of people; once you get to know some of the individual 'members,' you realize they are just people, like you, just with different life experiences and circumstances.

Steinem quotes Robin Morgan: 

"Hate generalizes, love specifies." (xxi)

I believe that is so very true. Those who are prejudiced always discriminate against groups of people: females, non-whites, etc. While those who love indiscriminately typically know individuals within these groups...  

...I've come to believe that, inside, each of us has a purple motorcycle.
We have only to discover it--and ride. (xv)

I agree. Though I would no longer trust myself to learn to physically handle a motorcycle on my own at this age, had my circumstances been different in the past, I would have almost certainly 'taken the road on my own!' Riding is a blast!

Steinem has a very subtle and gentle sense of humor throughout the book as she describes her varied experiences and the knowledge she has gained from them.

When people ask me why I still have 
hope and energy after all these years, 
I always say: Because I travel.

For more than four decades, I've spent 
at least half my time on the road. (xvii)

Since learning causes our brains to grow new synapses, I like to believe 

that the road is sharpening my mind and lengthening my life with surprise. (181)

I became a person whose friends and hopes were as spread out as my life. It just felt natural that the one common element in that life was the road. (xvii)

I was amazed to discover that Steinem's childhood included much moving around with little stability. Not even a real house for much of the time. She believes her penchant for travel as an adult is much derived from this rather 'gypsy-like' beginning to her life. Of her father:

When he swung through a state where he had friends, he never called in advance; 

he just dropped in. He didn't even make plans for poker and chess games he loved so much,

but found them by happenstance. He took comfort in not knowing about the future.

As he always said, "If I don't know what will happen tomorrow, it could be wonderful!" (19)

I guess that's true...with no expectations or plans you can always be surprised! The men got points from me for creativity:

My father was unable to resist swearing, and my mother had asked 

that he not swear around his daughters, so he named the family dog Dammit. (19)

I couldn't resist laughing at that! :) Steinem's description of her father is especially poignant, for although some of his child-rearing practices might not have been stellar (i.e. allowing them to watch whatever movie he wanted to watch, etc.), Steinem feels that

Because of my father, only kindness felt like home. (23)
...his faith in a friendly universe helped balance my mother's fear of a threatening one. 
He gave me that gift. He let in the light. (23)

That, as opposed to:

Whether by dowry murders in India, honor killings in Egypt, 

or domestic violence in the United States, 

records show that women are most likely to be beaten or killed at home and by men they know. Statistically speaking, home is an even more dangerous place for women than the road. (xxv)

I had never considered the overall statistics from this perspective, but that is correct. Such a very sad statement about humanity's progress, or more so, the lack thereof in these areas. 

Perhaps the most revolutionary act for a woman will be a self-willed journey--

and to be welcomed when she comes home. (xxv)

I admit to being jealous of her life as a young adult. Not only did she complete her bachelor's degree in a timely manner, but then she took off and lived in India for two years! Wow! I am impressed! And it is from her time spent in that country that she learned invaluable and indelible lessons about organizing people. 

...I discovered the magic of people telling their own stories to groups of strangers.

It's as if attentive people create a magnetic force field for stories 

the tellers themselves didn't know they had within them. 

Also, one of the simplest paths to deep change is 

for the less powerful to speak as much as they listen, 

and for the more powerful to listen as much as they speak. (xxiii)

So true, and yet not so easily accomplished, especially when those with social status and political power refuse to listen, ever. It was in these two years that Steinem discovered, experienced, and facilitated "Talking Circles." In coordination with Gandhi organizers, she traveled to remote villages and helped educate and organize the females. 

It was the first time I had witnessed the ancient and modern magic of groups in which anyone may speak in turn, everyone must listen, and consensus is more important than time. 

I had no idea that such talking circles had been a common form of governance for most 
of human history, from the Kwei and San in southern Africa, the ancestors of us all, 
to the First Nations on my own continent, 
where layers of such circles turned into the Iroquois Confederacy, 

the oldest continuous democracy in the world. (36)

Now that is some TRUE history, not just an anglo-centered view of U.S./World history as most of us were taught in school! I had read many years ago that the Iroquois Confederacy was the true model used for the U.S. government when first established. 

Talking circles once existed in Europe, too, before floods, famines, 
and patriarchal rule replaced them with hierarchy, priests, and kings. 
I didn't even know, as we sat in Ramnad, that a wave of talking circles and "testifying" 
was going on in black churches of my own country and igniting the civil rights movement. 
I certainly didn't guess that, a decade later, I would see consciousness-raising groups, 
women's talking circles, giving birth to the feminist movement. 
All I knew was that some deep part of me was being nourished and transformed
 right along with the villagers. (36)

The organizing wisdom she gleaned from these experiences:

If you want people to listen to you, you have to listen to them.

If you hope people will change how they live, you have to know how they live.

If you want people to see you, you have to sit down with them eye-to-eye. (37)

She makes a point of noting that Indira Gandhi instituted the first national family planning program, knowing from these informal talking circles that 

"ordinary women would use it, even if in secret, and literacy had little to do with it." (34)

For although these women might have few literacy skills, they were smart enough to know when their bodies were suffering from too many pregnancies too close together. Steinem abandoned most all her possessions while traveling throughout India and admitted she "felt oddly free" traveling so light and relying upon the kindness of villagers for her needs. 

What we're told about this country is way too limited by generalities, sound bites, 
and even the supposedly enlightened idea that there are two sides to every question. 
In fact, many questions have three or seven or a dozen sides. Sometimes I think the only real division into two is between people who divide everything into two, and those who don't. (xx)

Ooohh. I love this so much! There are always more interpretations/perspectives than you may believe possible!

Some of her favorite experiences:

...being interviewed by a nine-year-old girl who was the best player on an otherwise 
all-boy football team; and meeting a Latina college student, the daughter of undocumented immigrants, who handed me her card: CANDIDATE FOR THE U.S. PRESIDENCY, 2032. (xxiii)

Although she had bunches of reasons for her conscious decision NOT to attend Martin Luther King, Jr.'s march on Washington in 1963,

...I found myself on my way. All I can say years later is: 

If you find yourself drawn to an event against all logic, go. 

The universe is telling you something. (41)

And that is certainly the truth. Follow your gut! The one thing her companion noted was the lack of females on the podium--only ONE! 

Even the dictionary defines adventurer as "a person who has, enjoys, or seeks adventures," 

but adventuress is "a woman who uses unscrupulous means 
in order to gain wealth or social position." (xxv)

Unbelievable! Our society's attitudes are so skewed regarding gender!

When humans are ranked instead of linked, everyone loses. (44)

I vowed silently that I would never become an obstacle to any man's freedom. (xxiv)

Steinem admitted that at political meetings, she had typically given suggestions to a man sitting next to her, "knowing that if a man offered them, they would be taken more seriously." Until she was chastised by a black woman, 

"You white women,...if you don't stand up for yourselves, 

how can you stand up for anybody else?" (42)

More truth! This one remark certainly hit home for me. I had rather figured that out decades ago, if I wasn't able to advocate for myself and 'my kind,' how could I ever advocate for others? "Practice what you preach"! :)

...the most reliable predictor of whether a country is violent within itself--

or will use military violence against another country--is not poverty, natural resources, religion, 

or even degree of democracy; it's violence against females. 

It normalizes all other violence. (43)

Now that is some powerful stuff! Quantitative stats to uphold what is ethically and morally "right"! I love it when that happens!

 Polls show that what women fear most from men is violence, 

and what men fear most from women is ridicule. (180)

Perhaps why female comedians are not given more positive attention? 

"Only in comedy does an obedient white girl from the suburbs count as diversity." (180)

Tina Fey on the predominance of males, white males, in comedy. 

Altogether, I can't imagine technology replacing bookstores completely, 

any more than movies about a country replace going there. 

Wherever I go, bookstores are still the closest thing to a town square. (53)

Magical words for us obsessive bibiophiles! :)

Recently, an Ethiopian and several Kenyan drivers have sounded a bigger alarm. As one said,

"I never thought I would see a second wave of colonialism, but there is one and it's Chinese. 

Our countries are becoming wholly owned subsidiaries of China."

Maybe U.S. policy makers should talk to taxi drivers. (75)

I admit that initially I was not a fan of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), however, once I learned more about China's increasing influence in the world, I realized this may well be a case of 'keeping your enemies closer'...or at least those who may try to dominate the world.

Public opinion polls have long proved there is majority support for pretty much every issue that the women's movement has brought up, but those of us, women or men, 
who identify with feminism are still made to feel isolated, wrong, out of step. 
At first, feminists were assumed to be only discontented suburban housewives; 
then a small bunch of women's libbers, "bra burners," and radicals; then women on welfare; 
then briefcase-carrying imitations of male executives; then unfulfilled women 
who forgot to have children; then women voters responsible 
for a gender gap that really could decide elections. 
That last was too dangerous, so suddenly we were told we were in a "postfeminist" age, 
so we would relax, stop, quit. Indeed, the common purpose in all these disparate and
 contradictory descriptions is to slow and stop a challenge to the current hierarchy.

But controversy is a teacher. The accusation that feminism is bad for the family 
leads to understanding it's bad for the patriarchal variety, 
but good for democratic families that are the basis of democracy. 
The idea that women are "our own worst enemies" forces us to admit 
that we don't have the power to be, even if we wanted to. (102)

I've noticed that, if an audience is half women and half men, 
women worry about the reaction of the men around them. 
But in one that is two-thirds women and one-third men, 
women respond as they would on their own, and men hear women speaking honestly. 
When people of color are in the majority instead of the minority, 
audiences are often the best education that white listeners can have. (102-103)

Oh, so true! Over the past year I have had the immense pleasure of being in direct contact with more 'people of color' in one place than ever before in my life. It has been and is so much fun to get to know more people who don't look like me even better! And it does make a difference as to the overall make-up of a crowd regarding what overt reactions and behaviors you will witness.

You should read this book for her description of at the 1971 Harvard Law Review banquet. Suffice it to say, one of the male Harvard faculty becomes outraged and blasts her for having dared to judge the Harvard Law School at all. As was suggested to her later, in the future when any similar disruption occurs, basically proving your point, "Just pause, let the audience absorb the hostility, then say, 'I didn't pay him to say that.'" Ha! What great advice!

During a protest at an abortion clinic...

A staff member tells me that one of the female picketers has come in 
when the men were not around, had an abortion, and gone back to picket the next day. 
This sounds surrealistic to me--but not to the staff member. She explains that women 
in such anti-abortion groups are more likely to be deprived of birth control and 
so to need an abortion. They then feel guilty--and picket even more. 
This restriction on birth control may also explain why studies have long shown that Catholic women in general are more likely to have an abortion than are their Protestant counterparts. (190)

I sit and sigh as I type this... This is one major reason for my atheistic/secular humanist beliefs--the hypocrisy that organized religion engenders!

Steinem talks about being in historical places and the spiritual/mystical feelings that can result. Then once she has returned to New York she is sitting in her favorite place amid the tall outcroppings of igneous rock in Central Park, just a short walk from her apartment and thinking:

Who rested in this same place long ago, before theDutch and then the English arrived?

Whose hand touched this stone, and who looked at the same horizon? 

This vertical history feels more intimate and sensory than written history. 
It's been reaching out all along, I just wasn't paying attention. (217)

I have had very similar experiences at George Washington's Mount Vernon and Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, particularly thinking of the slaves and servants; especially walking the same land on which lived Abraham Lincoln in both Indiana and Illinois. I often wonder if it is just fanciful imaginings of my mind...or a true aura. It truly doesn't matter to me. I love that feeling!

Much information about Native Americans:

...across that diversity, they shared such common struggles as dealing with 
a federal government that had yet to honor one treaty in its entirety, 
gaining control of the schooling and treatment of their own children, protecting their land 
from exploitation for oil, uranium, and other resources on it--and much more. 
For instance, women on reservations suffered the highest rate of sexual assault in the country, 
yet the non-Native men who were the majority of their assaulters were not subject 
to tribal police or jurisdiction, and were mostly ignored by the larger legal system. (221)

This immediately brought to mind The Round House by Louise Erdrich! The point is made that unlike other First Nations/first peoples/indigenous cultures around the world, theirs exist only here...in their home country, and if their children do not learn it from them, it will die since there are no other places for them to return to to learn such knowledge. Good point! Many times these children were starved and abused, but even when their treatment was relatively humane, 

...teaching Native languages and practicing Native religion was illegal, 
something that continued until the 1970's. (222)

...in the 1970's the Indian Health Service of the U.S. Government admitted 
that thousands of Native women had been sterilized without their informed consent. 
Some called it a long-term strategy for taking over Indian lands, 
and others said it was the same racism that had sterilized black women in the South. 
Both the traditionalists and the young radicals of the American Indian Movement 
called it "slow genocide." It also took away women's ultimate power. (222)

...Native nations were often matrilineal: that is, clan identity passed through the mother, 
and a husband joined a wife's household, not vice versa. Matrilineal does not mean matriarchal, which like patriarchal, assumes that some group has to dominate--a failure of the imagination. Rather, female and male roles were distinct but flexible and equally valued. 
Women were usually in charge of agriculture and men of hunting, 
but one was not more important than the other. (222)

Native American women used herbal compounds to naturally abort fetuses when they discovered they were pregnant and realized it was too soon for their bodies to have recovered and carry another child to term. I never knew this! This is a demonstration of common sense for the overall health and well-being of females!

Many Native languages lack gendered pronouns like he and she. 

A human being was simply a human being. 

Even the concept of chief, an English word of French origin, 
reflected a European assumption that there had to be one male kinglike leader. 
In fact, caucus, a word derived from the Algonquin languages, better reflected 
the layers of talking circles and the goal of consensus that were at the heart of governance. 
Men and women might have different duties, but the point was balance. 
For instance, men spoke at meetings, 
but women appointed and informed the men who spoke. (223)

While in California, seated with a professor of premonotheistic spirituatlity, plus several women from some of the California tribes (California has more Native Americans than any other state):

All agreed that the paradigm of human organization had been the circle, 
not the pyramid or hierarchy--and it could be again.

I'd never known there was a paradigm that linked instead of ranked.

...Ben Franklin had indeed cited the Iroquois Confederacy as a model.
 He was well aware of its success in unifying vast areas of the United States and Canada by bringing together Native nations for mutual decisions but also allowing autonomy in local ones. He hoped the Constitution could do the same for the thirteen states. 
That's why he invited two Iroquois men to Philadelphia as advisers. 
Among their first questions was said to be: "Where are the women?" (224)

...it was the equality of women in those nations that inspired white women neighbors to begin organizing the suffrage movement.

...Feminism is memory. 

"Feminists too often believe...that no one has ever experienced the kind of society 
that empowered women and made that empowerment the basis of rules and civilization. 
The price the feminist community must pay because it is not aware...is necessary confusion, division and much lost time.(225) 

The root of oppression is the loss of memory. (226)

YOU CANNOT THINK YOURSELF INTO RIGHT LIVING.

YOU LIVE YOURSELF INTO RIGHT THINKING.--Native Elders (234)

Clearly, Columbus never "discovered" American, in either sense of that word.

The people who knew it were already here. (238)

Wilma, who was the first woman to be Principal Chief, undergoes daily chemotherapy for cancer.

"Every day is a good day--because we are part of everything alive." (239)

Roots can exist without flowers, but no flower can exist without roots. (117)

 No matter what your political beliefs, this book is so much more 
than just a reminiscence of a life lived!
Do yourself a favor and check it out!

Happy reading!
--Lynn

West With the Night--Markham's Autobiography

West With the Night by Beryl Markham

(Title links to synopsis.)

Markham accomplished several 
"female firsts" in her lifetime: 

first female licensed 
racehorse trainer in Kenya, 

first female to complete 
a solo flight across the Atlantic 
from east to west, and 
first female licensed 
commercial pilot in Kenya.

I became interested in reading her autobiography as a result of having read Paula McLain's historical fiction novel, Circling the Sun 
(released July 2015), which I found fascinating!

Between these two books, I feel as if I have a 

fairly comprehensive understanding of Beryl Markham, the person.

To say she was a free and independent spirit, is definitely an understatement, 
especially for the time in which she lived!

Having read Circling the Sun first I was aware of some of her earlier intimate relationships,   and rumors thereof. I felt rather surprised that she mentioned

none of her intimate relationships with men in her autobiography, 
but strictly her personal and particularly professional accomplishments. 
Then I began worrying about my own motivations! Have I fallen subject to the sensationalism that seemingly pervades current mainstream media? Yikes! I hope not...

I am fascinated by the controversy as to whether it was her third husband 

who actually wrote West With the Night or whether she wrote it herself. 
However, per Wikipedia, the publisher had paid for another book to be written by both of them, and in the meantime, her third husband refused to be involved in writing a second book, so she submitted the manuscript she had written herself and the publisher refused it, stating it was not written by the same writer as was West With the Night. 
One biographer found indications that her third husband had edited the WWtN manuscript, though he claimed to have changed very little. So, who knows? 
The only thing I do know for certain is that I enjoyed reading this book. :)

Charles Baldwin Clutterbuck (Yep! No lie...Clutterbuck was this man's name!) moved his family from England to Njoro in British East Africa "because it was new and you could feel the future of it under your feet." He farmed and trained and bred racehorses, though we also learn he was quite an entrepreneur, building a grist mill from two old steam engines and making money charging to mill grain for those from many many miles around. With the profit from this venture, he purchased two more old railway engines, "fitted them with pulleys, and started the first important saw mill in British East Africa." Though this is not where Markham begins telling her story...

...I am no weaver. Weavers create. 

This is remembrance--revisitation; 

and names are keys that open corridors 

no longer fresh in the mind, 

but nonetheless familiar in the heart. (3)

I couldn't help but sigh after reading the first two paragraphs. So true, isn't it? I love this picture on the right; she appears to be in deep thought, much as I would like to imagine she might have been as she began writing her memoir... Beryl was just over six feet tall with blonde hair and blue eyes and evidently an appealing figure. She was described as a "Society Beauty" in some headlines. She was apparently quite attractive to most men.

She begins by describing her work as a free-lance pilot flying out of Nairobi.

Even in nineteen-thirty-five it wasn't easy to get a plane in East Africa and it was almost impossible to get very far across country without one. There were roads, of course, 

leading in a dozen directions out of Nairobi. They started out boldly enough, 

but grew narrow and rough after a few miles and dwindled into the rock-studded hills, 

or lost themselves in a morass of red muram mud or black cotton soil, 

in the flat country and the valleys. (5)

It is these descriptions I love to read...I can almost imagine these 'roads' as they peter out to become nonexistent before very long. In speaking of Africa:

Whatever happens, armies will continue to rumble, colonies may change masters, 

and in the face of it all Africa lies, and will lie, like a great, wisely somnolent giant 

unmolested by the noisy drum-rolling of bickering empires. It is not only land; 

it is an entity born of one man's hope and another man's fancy. 

...there are many Africas. There are as many Africas as there are books about Africa--

and as many books about it as you could read in a leisurely lifetime...

All of these books...are accurate in their various portrayals of Africa...an Africa true to each writer of each book. Being thus all things to all authors...Africa must be all things to all readers.

Africa is mystic; it is wild; it is a sweltering inferno; it is a photographer's paradise, 

a hunter's Valhalla, an escapist's Utopia...it withstands all interpretations...

To a lot of people, as to myself, it is just 'home.' 

It is all these things but one thing--it is never dull. (8)

I think one must have a true sense of adventure to be able to do what her father did and what she did...living their lives in a scarcely inhabited environment so very different from anything in England...and definitely "wild" by comparison. 

...the soul of Africa, its integrity, the slow inexorable pulse of its life, is its own and 

of such singular rhythm that no outsider, unless steeped from childhood in its endless, even beat, can ever hope to experience it, except only as a bystander might experience 

a Masai war dance knowing nothing of its music nor the meaning of its steps. (13)

One of the things I love most about her autobiography is that she was raised alongside, actually with, the native children, so she knows of which she speaks firsthand. This is no imagined feeling about Africa, but a result of her direct experience of living in cooperation with nature, just as the indigenous people had for many generations and eons. 

Beryl describes her experience of flying during night-time: 

It is at times unreal to the point where the existence of other people seems not even 

a reasonable probability. The hills, the forests, the rocks, and the plains 
are one with the darkness, and the darkness is infinite. 

Before such a flight it was this anticipation of aloneness more than any thought of physical danger that used to haunt me a little and make me wonder sometimes 

if mine was the most wonderful job in the world after all.

I always concluded that lonely or not it was still free from the curse of boredom. (10)

I can understand a bit more about her personal relationships as a result of reading her autobiography; she definitely was never bored nor did she suffer from boredom as she was always creating and developing new relationships, never standing still nor remaining with one partner for too long.

She has landed in an out-of-the-way location of "scrubby huts" to deliver oxygen to a dying man...

Hot night wind stalked through the thorn trees and leleshwa that surrounded the clearing. 
It bore the odour of swampland, the small of Lake Victoria, the breath of weeds and 
sultry plains and tangled bush. It whipped at the oil flares and snatched at 
the surfaces of the Avian. But there was loneliness in it and aimlessness, 
as if its passing were only a sterile duty lacking even beneficent promise of rain. (18)

They ask if she won't please visit this dying man before she takes off. She finally agrees though she considers it to be a meaningless mission, at best. The man wanted news, news of the world outside his very small world.

Wherever you are, it seems, you must have news of some other place, some bigger place, so that a man on his deathbed in the swamplands of Victoria Nyanza is more interested in what has lately happened in this life than in what may happen in the next. 

It is really this that makes death so hard--curiosity unsatisfied. (25)

So bittersweet and yet so true... And although Beryl describes her total revulsion of "a human being swathed in the sickly-sweet atmosphere of disease and impending death" as much worse than her fear of any snake, I felt this was more typical of most humans than not. I believe this is due more to fear of facing our own inevitable mortality than anything else. 

In considering a fellow pilot who was lost in the Serengetti, she sees "a single jackal foraging expectantly in a mound of filth" nearby and thinks...

The sight of the jackal had brought to mind the scarcely comforting speculation that in Africa there is never any waste. Death particularly is never wasted. What the lion leaves, 
the hyena feasts upon and what scraps remain are morsels for the jackal, 
the vulture, or even the consuming sun. (23)

Add to this thought the fact that the area where the pilot was "lost" was thousands of acres of UNSURVEYED land according to the maps. This was not unusual, as much of Africa still lay unexplored. 

All this, together with the fact that there was no radio, nor any system designed to check planes 

in and out of their points of contact, made it essential for a pilot either to develop 

his intuitive sense to the highest degree or to adopt a fatalistic philosophy toward life. 

Most of the airmen I knew in Africa at that time managed to do both. (36)

I feel Beryl had the added advantage of knowing Africa from a 'native' perspective, having hunted and lived with the indigenous people as a child. Bishon Singh is in the Serengetti as she rescues Woody, that lost pilot. Bishon speaks to Beryl of flight:

'So,' he scolded, 'now it has come to this. 
To walk is not enough. 
To ride on a horse is not enough.

Now people must go from place to place through the air, 
like a diki toora. 

Nothing but trouble will come of it, Beru. 
God spits upon such blasphemy.'

'God has spat,' sighed Woody. (52)

Thank goodness for Beryl's commitment to keep flying over those thousands of acres in the Serengetti and looking, always looking, for just one little clue...and she almost missed it, thinking it a strange little bit of water, then realizing it was the sun reflecting off the wing of Woody's plane. She was quite a courageous soul! 

She describes a huge herd of impala, wildebeest, and zebra, fleeing "before the shadow of my wings," as she explores the Serengetti searching for Woody:

As the herd moved it became a carpet of rust-brown and grey and dull red.

It was not like a herd of cattle or of sheep, because it was wild, and it carried with it the 

stamp of wilderness and the freedom of a land still more a possession of Nature than of men. 

To see ten thousand animals untamed and not branded with the symbols of human commerce 

is like scaling an unconquered mountain for the first time, 

or like finding a forest without roads or footpaths, or the blemish of an axe. 

You know then that what you had always been told--that the world once lived and grew 

without adding machines and newsprint and brick-walled streets and the tyranny of clocks. (38)

I don't know about you, but I can remember a similar sense of awe and spiritual presence as I watched herds in the wild shown on nature shows I would watch on TV as a child. I guess I have always been drawn to the seemingly fluid movements of herds of thousands of wild beasts. 

The sikh, Bishon Singh, who had been the first one on the scene when Beryl was attacked by a 'pet' lion as a child, had himself later been attacked by a lion, which he believed made the two of them like "brothers." Beryl devotes a whole chapter to this life event, "He Was a Good Lion," which might seem incongruous, given the fact that he had attacked her and continued to kill over the next three nights: a horse, a yearling bullock, and "a cow fresh for milking," until finally captured and caged to live out the "many many years" remaining in his life. 

It seems characteristic of the mind of man that the repression of what is natural to humans 

must be abhorred, but that what is natural to an infinitely more natural animal 

must be confined within the bounds of a reason peculiar only to men--

more peculiar sometimes than seems reasonable at all...

He had lived and died in ways not of his choosing. He was a good lion.

He had done what he could about being a tame lion. 

Who thinks it just to be judged by a single error?

I still have the scars of his teeth and claws, but they are very small now and almost forgotten, 

and I cannot begrudge him his moment. (66)

Beryl herself could understand that this 'tame' lion who was allowed to run loose on the Delamere's estate would attack her as she ran carelessly through the wild growth near the farm. She certainly seemed to suffer no long-term physical effects. She was especially close to Delamere and his wife:

Delamere had two great loves--East Africa and the Masai People. 

To the country he gave his genius, most of his substance, and all of his energy. 

To the Masai he gave the help and understanding of a mind unhampered by the smug belief

that the white man's civilization has nothing to learn from the black man's preferred lack of it. 

He respected the spirit of the Masai, their traditions, their physical magnificence, 

and their knowledge of cattle which, excepting war, was their only concern...

Delamere's character had as many facets as a cut stone, 

but each facet shone with individual brightness. (71)

According to Beryl, the Delamere estate became "an exemplary farm for all of British East Africa to profit by, but almost a small feudal state as well." 

...if Delamere was the champion of the East African settler (as indeed he was), then the devotion and comradeship of his wife were as responsible for his many victories as his own genius. (72)

Lady Delamere had served as Beryl's "adopted mother" and of her Beryl states,

I cannot remember a time when her understanding 

of my youthful problems was lacking or her advice withheld. (72)

I did chuckle at that last phrase regarding advice! :) That proved to me she did act more like a mother to Beryl than not. At least Beryl did have some adults who helped raise her through childhood. 

Buller, Beryl's faithful canine companion, was abducted from the hut he shared with Beryl one night by a leopard, and when she finally found him the next morning, he was barely alive, but following 10 months of "tedious nursing" he "became the same Buller again--except that his head had lost what little symmetry it ever had and cat-killing developed from a sport to a vocation." Years later he attacks a warthog about six times his size, and is torn open, but recovers once again. But even Buller's life finally ends...

What can be said of Buller--a dog like any other, except only to me? 

...Rest you, Buller...There is respect for a heart like yours, and if its beating stop,

the spirit lives to guard the ways you wandered. (136)

This made me tear up, having lost my childhood canine companion as a senior in high school. Being an only child living in the country on a farm, my dog was quite literally my best friend. :)

The first foal that Beryl births on her own with the help of Otieno and Toombo is given to her by her father. She names him Pegasus. It is on Pegasus that she sets out once her father has lost his farm...toward the stables at Molo where her father believes she can learn to train horses...as a professional. 

Remember that you are still just a girl and don't expect too much...work and hope. 
But never hope more than you work. (135)

It is on this long trip that she and Pegasus happen upon Tom Black, working to get his car running again... He shares with her his dream to own his own plane and fly again, having flown in the war.

It makes you feel bigger than you are--closer to being something you've sensed you might be capable of, but never had the courage to seriously imagine. (153)

He had been lavish with a stranger. He had left me a word, tossed me a key 

to a door I never knew was there, and had still to find...

Whoever heard of Destiny with pliers in his hand? (154)

It was many days before their paths crossed again, but he had an indelible affect upon Beryl's life. And although Tom accomplished much in his life, 

If a man has any greatness in him, it comes to light, 

not in one flamboyant hour, but in the ledger of his daily work. (153)

What a revealing insight...I so agree! It is easy for a person to be impressive or do something impressive once or for a short while, but what reveals a person's true character is his/her daily thoughts, intentions, actions and interactions, isn't it? He had planted a seed...and it grew over time...

I'm no horsewoman, but the description of one race where Beryl had trained the favored colt to be a champion only to have him stripped away from her at the last minute and she hurriedly trains another smaller filly with bad legs...the description of that race as she watches these two horses...it's so full of tension and such bursts of feelings! She states that you do not "watch" a horse race, you "read" it. And poor Beryl! Both of them race their hearts out...and does her handicapped little filly win it? Yes...she even sets a track record! Though the owner wisely retires her, ignoring the money that might be made by continuing to race her. That made me so happy. Why risk her legs breaking down just to get more money? No. Have a heart and care for her. Just celebrate her victory! That's so right...

Beryl did learn to fly and in the aftermath...

Life had a different shape; it had new branches and some of the old branches were dead.

It had followed the constant pattern of discard and growth that all lives follow. 

Things had passed, new things had come. The wonder of my first fledgling hours of flight were lost in the many hundreds of hours I had sat making my living at the controls of my plane. (197)

Flight is but momentary escape from the eternal custody of earth. (285)

In describing Denys Finch-Hatton (of Out of Africa fame):

If someone has not already said it, someone will say that he was a great man who 

never achieved greatness, and this will not only be trite, but wrong; 

he was a great man who never achieved arrogance. (192)

What came from him, if emanate is not the better word, was a force that bore inspiration, 

spread confidence in the dignity of life, and even gave sometimes a presence to silence. (193)

Denys had invited Beryl to fly with him as he tried out his theory of scouting elephant overhead by airplane for hunting parties. (After reading The Elephant Whisperer by Lawrence Anthony and learning more about elephants, particularly their intelligence and communicative abilities, I was sickened by this talk of hunting elephants, but it is what was done at that time...) When Beryl mentioned it to Tom, he asked her to wait and not go with Denys on that day. Then her native companion later asked if she had heard from Denys. Somehow both of them had premonitions...for Denys and his Kikuyu boy died at the beginning of that flight...the plane simply 'crashed and burned.' 

Denys' death left some lives without design, but they were rebuilt again, 

as lives and stones are, into other patterns. (196)

Beryl's opinion:

As to the brutality of elephant-hunting, I cannot see that it is any more brutal than 

ninety percent of all other human activities. I suppose there is nothing more tragic about 

the death of an elephant than there is about the death of a Hereford steer--

certainly not in the eyes of the steer. 

The only difference is that the steer has neither the ability nor the chance 

to' outwit the gentleman who wields the slaughterhouse snickersnee, 

while the elephant has both of these to pit against the hunter. (208)

The older I get the more I realize that ALL beings, animals and plants, in this world are more than we humans believe them to be. I get her point about the steer. And having said all this, you would believe me to at least have adopted a vegetarian lifestyle, if not vegan, but I have not. Perhaps old habits die hard...and I must eat--something! :) According to her, elephants will always simply charge and kill a man. Though she and Blix were not dispatched in this way by one elephant they encountered, though it could have done just that with both of them... Wow...how scary would that be? According to Blix, there is an old adage translated from the Coptic

that contains all the wisdom of the ages--

"Life is life and fun is fun, but it's all so quiet when the goldfish die." (219)

Beryl's philosophy on life:

A life has to move or it stagnates...

It is no good telling yourself that one day you will wish you had never made that change; 

it is no good anticipating regrets. 

You learn to watch other people, but you never watch yourself 

because you strive against loneliness. 

Being alone in an aeroplane...irrevocably alone, with nothing to observe but...

the beliefs, the faces, and the hopes rooted in your mind--

such an experience can be as startling as the first awareness of a stranger 

walking by your side at night. You are the stranger. (283)

Oh, I think Beryl's on to something here. I firmly believe that few of us ever take enough time to be by ourselves, just to contemplate and wonder...about everything, life, death, all that lies behind and before us. As a species I believe the majority of us have not discovered and certainly not nurtured our introspective skills...and I believe we have lost much along with the loss of such abilities. 

Reading the last 20 pages or so of this book as Markham describes her record-breaking flight was tense! If you want to know just how brave and courageous she had to be to survive it, then you should read her account. Wow. She ended up crash-landing...so definitely not strictly according to plan, but she accomplished the main goal! And yes, that is a bandage on her head. Fortunately, a Cape Breton Islander found her...

I had been wandering for an hour and the black mud had got up to my waist 

and the blood from the cut in my head 

had met the mud halfway. (290)

She discovers that Tom has died, at the controls of his plane. And then she is traveling by ship back to...Africa, ostensibly to see her father. Taking with her many of the newspaper clippings about her record-breaking flight...as well as some of the articles written about Tom. 

As I look at these pictures

of her, I keep reminding

myself that she stood over

six feet tall.

She was quite tall and 

very good looking...

and definitely...

brave, courageous,

and never ever

stagnant!

I stumbled across this 1993 review of The Lives of Beryl Markham by Errol Trzebinski 
in the Independent, and now I really want to read it! 

And I feel as if I want to accompany these two books by also 
reading Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen/Karen Blixen. 
I watched the movie once, many years ago, 
and enjoyed it very much! Definitely do for a 'rewatch'!
I might as well add her Shadows on the Grass, too, 
since these five stories were a follow-up to Out of Africa. 

If you feel at all interested in this book, 
I strongly recommend it as an informative yet intriguing read!

Do you know much about Markham?
I am glad to have learned so much about her life.
In many ways I keep comparing what I know of 
Anne Morrow Lindbergh's life and Markham's. 
(I read and loved The Aviator's Wife by Melanie Benjamin!)
They were both female aviators at a time when only males flew planes!
They both accomplished female firsts, but were seemingly quite different people.
Though, as I consider, they also had some things in common.

Happy reading
--Lynn