Roberts - Limits of the Known

By the time I started work on this book, cancer had left me so weak that I knew even the most routine kinds of research would prove exhausting or impossible. For weeks at a time, visits to the Harvard libraries, whose scholarly treasure I had mined for decades, were beyond my powers. I love doing research, and never before had I hired an assistant to help me hunt down texts and testimonies hidden among the stacks and archives. Now I needed to.

In Madeline Miller, I struck 24-carat gold. Why a Harvard postdoc in earth and planetary sciences at the start of her brilliant career might find it worth her while to unearth a fifteenth-century legal document in French or interview a cave diver in backwoods Mexico via a scratchy telephone connection baffles me to this day, yet Madeline not only aced these tasks but came up with leads and lore I would never have discovered on my own. It helped that she is a climber, scuba diver, and adventurer in her own right. That shes become my friend is a blessing I could not have anticipated.

Several experts in their fields aided me with their insights and opinions. In particular, I am grateful to old pals Richard Bangs and Judi Wineland for their elucidation of river-running triumphs and Maasai enigmas, respectively, and to new acquaintance Sam Meacham for making the unthinkably scary business of exploring Yucatns cenotes comprehensible to a scribbler whos never learned to swim.

The companions who shared my own adventures in the wilderness during the last sixty years, from childhood through 2017, are too numerous to salute here. I hope the glow of satisfaction and excitement still warms their souls as it does mine. From my new vantage point of the physical handicaps cancer has wrought, I cherish those exploits more keenly than ever. Thanks to all of those friends for lacing up their boots to join me.

Two of them, Matt Hale and Ed Ward, read my book in draft. Their comments helped me steer the course on which I had set out with only a balky compass and a sketchy map.

This is the fifteenth book for which Stuart Krichevsky has served as my agent. No partner of any kind has been more valuable to my writing career during the last seventeen years. Stuart is that marvelous rarityan agent who still loves books, no matter how many wrangles hes undergone in the ceaseless struggle to bring them to print. Hes also a witty fellow with a sense of humor that would have made Buster Keaton smile. Whenever a new idea for a book swims into my ken, a single voice in my headhalf stern superego, half hearty cheerleaderdelivers a Krichevskian verdict long before I talk to the man himself. Over the years, Stuart has filled his office with super-competent colleagues and assistants. My occasional interactions with those folks have always left me impressed with their diligence and judgment.

When I got sick in the summer of 2015, one of my darkest premonitions sprouted from the insecurity all writers nurse like stubborn weeds. I thought, No publisher is going to take a chance on an author who may be dying of cancer. The fear was acute enough that I briefly pondered staying mum about my condition. To the contrary, in Star Lawrence at W. W. Norton & Company, I have an editor who voiced his faith in my continued work as a writer. I am delighted to be embarking on my fourth book with a man of such compassion and integrity, who behaves as though he were unaware of his status as a publishing legend.

At Norton, Sarah Bolling and Laura Usselman deftly managed all the checks and balances that go into turning a manuscript into a book. And Allegra Huston, on her third go-round with me, proved again to be a model of perception and restraint, as her copyediting improved my prose on page after page, while she never quarreled with my arguments even at their crankiest.

That I was able to finish the job of writing this book depended month after month on the skills of doctors and nurses who not only kept me alive but for the most part compos mentis. The experts at DanaFarber Cancer Institute in Boston who took charge of my case wrung from me thankfulness that often brought me to tears. Foremost among these savants was my primary oncologist, Dr. Guilherme Rabinowits, a man of great wisdom conjoined with deep empathy.

For my wife of forty-nine years, Sharon Roberts, nothing I say here can adequately express my gratitude and love. In order to take care of me after July 2015, Sharon effectively curtailed her flourishing career as a psychoanalyst. When neuropathy in my right hand and arm made typing on a word processor too arduous, I resorted to writing longhand. Then I dictated my chapters to Sharon as she typed them up, paying heed to every diacritical mark and parenthetical aside. What a strange way for her to read my book! It was as if she were listening to the audio version even as she offered suggestions how to make it better.

Far deeper than my debt to her skills as my amanuensis is the knowledge that I simply could not have survived the last twenty-two months without Sharon. In the hospital during my many incarcerations, and even at home in Watertown, there were many dark nights of both soul and body. Whatever source fills the wellsprings of love and commitment, Sharons seems limitless.

I hope that in this book, particularly in the last chapter, I have returned a small portion of her love, even as I voice my admiration for her as a person. And I pledge what months and years I have left on earth to sharing the intricate wonder of existence with her.

ALSO BY DAVID ROBERTS

Alone on the Wall (with Alex Honnold)

The Lost World of the Old Ones: Discoveries in the Ancient Southwest

Alone on the Ice: The Greatest Survival Story in the History of Exploration

The Mountain: My Time on Everest (with Ed Viesturs)

The Will to Climb: Obsession and Commitment and the
Quest to Climb Annapurna (with Ed Viesturs)

Finding Everett Ruess: The Life and Unsolved Disappearance
of a Legendary Wilderness Explorer

K2: Life and Death on the Worlds Most Dangerous Mountain (with Ed Viesturs)

The Last of His Kind: The Life and Adventures of Bradford Washburn,
Americas Boldest Mountaineer

Devils Gate: Brigham Young and the Great Mormon Handcart Tragedy

No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the Worlds 14 Highest Peaks (with Ed Viesturs)

Sandstone Spine: Seeking the Anasazi on the First Traverse of the Comb Ridge

On the Ridge Between Life and Death: A Climbing Life Reexamined

The Pueblo Revolt: The Secret Rebellion That Drove
the Spaniards Out of the Southwest

Four Against the Arctic: Shipwrecked for Six Years at the Top of the World

Escape from Lucania: An Epic Story of Survival

True Summit: What Really Happened on the Legendary Ascent of Annapurna

A Newer World: Kit Carson, John C. Frmont, and the
Claiming of the American West

The Lost Explorer: Finding Mallory on Mount Everest (with Conrad Anker)

Escape Routes

In Search of the Old Ones: Exploring the Anasazi World of the Southwest

Once They Moved Like the Wind: Cochise, Geronimo, and the Apache Wars

Mount McKinley: The Conquest of Denali (with Bradford Washburn)

Iceland: Land of the Sagas (with Jon Krakauer)

Jean Stafford: A Biography

Great Exploration Hoaxes

Moments of Doubt

Deborah: A Wilderness Narrative

The Mountain of My Fear

Copyright 2018 by David Roberts

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First Edition