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Narrated by Patrick Cullen
Eric PinderUnabridged — 10 hours, 6 minutes
Narrated by Patrick Cullen
Eric PinderUnabridged — 10 hours, 6 minutes
Where can you find the worst weather on earth? The surprising answer in Tying Down the Wind is: everywhere. You don't need to climb Mount Everest or voyage to the icy desert of Antarctica to witness both the beauty and the destructiveness of weather. The same forces are at work in your own backyard.
Eric Pinder, certified observer at Mount Washington Meteorological Observatory, takes readers on a voyage of discovery through the atmosphere, a swirling ocean of air that surrounds and sustains life. The journey begins in a sunny New England woodlot and ends atop the polar ice of Antarctica-where we learn, remarkably, that the two extremes are not so different after all. Tying Down the Wind invites you to experience the excitement of the world's worst weather in the comfort of your own home.
Pinder, a weather-watcher at the Mount Washington Meteorological Observatory and a magazine and radio journalist, has a knack for making the abstractions of weather phenomena, from the mundane to the extraordinary, palpably clear.
He touches eloquently on such topics as wind-chill, avalanches, hypothermia, and Antarctica, with its six months of night and its overwhelming isolation.
In Tying Down the Wind, he does a great deal to lasso the invisible force that is both a cause and effect of weather. The wind in his lyrical ruminations is an ephemeral spirit, a tangible demon, a great power without which there would be no life and no variation in the Earth’s unpredictable skies….It’s a pleasant, rambling read for thoughtful nature lovers, stitched with folklore and history.
Tying Down the Wind is clearly meant to be an entertaining, transporting read, neither encyclopedic nor juvenile. Like experiments in cloud-seeding, it is a mixed success. The author can be a good adventure writer-reporter. He describes the adrenaline-producing pleasures of picking out, on foot, in near zero-visibility conditions, the path down a treacherous, snow-covered mountain road for a snocat containing several of his mates. Various encounters, including his own, with disorienting and potentially lethal white-outs are properly chastening. His description of death by avalanche is briefer than Sebastian Junger’s essay in The Perfect Storm on the physiology of drowning, but every bit as hair-raising.
Pinder knows how to make talking about weather exciting. In Tying Down the Wind, not only does he explain how weather works and what triggers its sometimes violent changes, but he does it with poetic charm.
Pinder’s thoughtful musings on air, land and sea, and the natural forces that climatize each, have an elegiac quality, accented by careful word choice and measured prose….Pinder’s style reads better as a gathering of separate, yet thematically connected, essays than as a cover-to-cover read. The material is as complex and dense in parts as the slushy spring snow of New England. It’s better absorbed and assimilated over the course of several sittings, bolstered by frequent visits to the helpful glossary at the back of the book.
Tying Down the Wind is a great deal like Henry David Thoreau's Walden, mixing as it does philosophy and natural science in a book chock-full of creative, memorable imagery....a pleasure to read. Whether Tying Down the Wind has the staying power of Walden remains to be seen. But I place this book in the same lofty, literary category."
Tying Down the Wind is distinguished by the poetic skill with which Pinder transforms experiences with ordinary breezes, sunshine, and humidity into rapturous appreciation for the atmosphere….The book is the product of deep insight. Pinder is a weather observer by trade, but his observations of humanity are equally exacting. He expresses the onset of goosebumps, the drip of sweat, the pain of snow blindness, the fragrance of a summer day, the rebirth of spring, and other common weather experiences with uncommon acuity….Weather is the seed of contemplation and experience, and the fruits of both emerge with memorable vividness in Tying Down the Wind.
On the summit of New Hampshire's Mount Washington, "Home of the World's Worst Weather," snow can fall in the height of summer and hurricane-force winds blow more than 100 days each year. Not surprisingly, Pinder (Life at the Top: Tales, Truths, and Trusted Recipes from the Mount Washington Observatory), staff writer at the observatory, describes enough extreme weather, hardship, damage, and destruction to make both meteorology and disaster buffs salivate. But as a true weather enthusiast, he is equally eloquent--if somewhat melancholy--when describing quiet mornings tending sheep on a New England farm or an autumn hike near the Berkshire Mountains. Although the author occasionally lapses into meteorological jargon, this book is not just for weather buffs; it would also be a good addition to nature and regional collections. Recommended for public and academic libraries.--Nancy R. Curtis, Univ. of Maine Lib., Orono Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\
Author and Mount Washington weather observer Pinder blends science and poetry in his descriptions of weather phenomena and the forces behind them. As he tours the world's weather from New England to Antarctica, he explains for a general audience what causes weather and how the worst systems (i.e. tornadoes, heat waves and blizzards) are all closely related. Illustrated with some b&w photographs. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
| BN ID: | 2940169666533 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Blackstone Audio, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 02/01/2002 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
