Engaging essays, beautiful artwork, poses questions that may be unresolvable.
4 stars
At first glance, the book seems to be about Alison Bechdel's life of exercise. Then you see it's also about her love of the outdoors, which leads to some truly beautiful layouts of trees and mountains and tiny people in the landscape. She bounces her own transcendent experiences off other transcendalists: Wordsworth and Coleridge, Emerson and Margaret Fuller, Jack Kerouac and Gary Snyder. The more she strives and succeeds and struggles with that very success, the more mystified she seems to be about why she works so hard, both mentally and physically. None of the answers she finds in therapy, meditation, or Buddhism seem to satisfy for long. In the end, I'm not convinced that her persona in the book has truly accepted what few want to face: our own mortality and failing bodies. But then, I'm only a year older, so who could say if there are any answers.
