Dan Richards, Outpost ***

For my 40th birthday, we spent a few days in a cabin on out-of-season Orcas Island. For my 50th, we flew to Fairbanks to see the northern lights. For my 60th, nationwide bad weather kept us at home, so I read Outpost in hopes of vicariously experiencing Dan Richards' visits to "far-flung outposts in mountains, tundra, forests, oceans and deserts... which have inspired writers, artists, and musicians."

I expected the book to describe the experience of spending time in remote places, but it's actually more of a travel book describing the experience of getting to those places. Richards goes to hiking cabins in Iceland and Scotland, a fire lookout, a lighthouse, a Shinto shrine, and Svalbard. The only locale he talks about spending time at is a writers retreat in Switzerland. The strongest passages are vivid images from along the way, such as this description from riding a ferry as night falls:

I bought a coffee and sat down amongst the diners, all of us gazing at the dark waters and red outlined horizons whilst the ship trembled beneath us. Eventually the windows welled into mirrors and the formica diner fanned out either side like wings spreading into the night.

Outpost is a haphazard collection of stories barely held together by the theme. Even the prose is haphazard, shifting swiftly between poetic natural descriptions and sarcastic asides. Some of the most interesting tidbits are relegated to footnotes, such as the fact that "polar bear hair is actually transparent and not white at all - it's hollow and merely scatters light, making them appear white - their skin is actually black." Reading the book feels like spending time at a bar with a raconteur.