IN WHICH A BOOK IS REVIEWED (BADLY).....

.....by Me, with could be quite catastrophic,   I don't know:  I'm an Archaeologist, Not a book critic.  All that follows makes sense to me.   

Sorry.

That said, you need to read this book.   I mean, look at it:

It’s a snorkel equipped Land Rover, on not depressing skinny tires.  Right off the bat, that should speak some tall volumes right there.       And the title is an intriguing one too….certainly does not initially conjure the notion of what the book is about, but makes perfect sense.   And if the truck and interesting title don’t catch your attention, how about the fact that the cover image oozes that honeyed word that has lured so many out, some to gristly ends……

..ADVENTURE…

Yes, that is my desk.  Yes there is a gun on it.   And a cup of tea.  And an old airplane toy, and line level string.   And keys.   It was not posed.   I am not that clever.   Don’t judge.

ANYWAY….

We Will Be Free, is a book written by Graeme Bell about overlanding with his family (which I will come back to) and his truck, a Land Rover Defender 130, or what we in the states would call “a quad cab truck”.   

First, I should explain “Overlanding” because some people who read this (all….7...of you, if I’m lucky) may not know the term.

AHEM: “Overlanding is self-reliant overland travel to remote destinations where the journey is the principal goal.”   Shamelessly stole that from Wikipedia via the Google.    I’m not bashful to say it.    It’s pretty sound.

So, this book is about a guy and his family toodling around some places where not many people go, and that’s about it….

EXCEPT IT SO ISN’T!

Here is me being critical:   The book is not always eloquent.    Sometimes, you find the thread interrupted.   Sometimes you have to go back and re-read parts to understand something further in the book.  Graeme is a man who writes, and writes like a man would, which is roughhewn at times, like old wood buildings.  

And that is why I LOVE the damn thing.    Really.    Allow me to elaborate before Graeme shows up at my door to have a discussion (Dude, He’s big. I know I’m pretty big, but dude….no brawling with him.)     I love this book because it is exactly that:  Rough.   And REAL.   I have read books that are written by people who write as their living and their absolute passion and are self-conscience about what they put on a page.    You can tell because it affects the truthfulness of their work.     I said Graeme writes a roughhewn book?   Yeah,   roughhewn like the timbers holding the walls of a renaissance cathedral.  It’s majestic.

Graeme writes a book that makes you pay attention.   It makes you think about what they are doing as you read it.  It conveys a sense that it is too vital and real to have been made up. Visceral, is almost a good word.   The amount of meat consumed in the book’s gestation would allow visceral as a good word, I imagine.

We Will Be Free reminds me of the old journals and transcribed diaries of soldiers and immigrants coming out into the American west with covered wagons 150- 200 years ago.  Except less of “Timmy has died of dysentery.” Anyone who played Oregon Trail will get that.    It is something that you know is special because the book is not why he is doing this…he is doing this because he is the record keeper. 

 

DAMN IT, MARGE!

And that brings me to his family.    I really feel that they ALL wrote this book.    Graeme, his wife Luisa, and their two kids Keelan and Jessica, are on this amazing journey together, and if the four of them were not in the story together, it would be a completely different book.   Started in South Africa, and trundled about that continent a bit.    Then onto a boat (very immigrant/new world-ish)   went the Land Rover, because it fits poorly into overhead luggage, and the Bell family find themselves in South America,  where their British-Midlands built covered wagon had trundled them about a continent that, dare I say,  is still very frontier.     

Graeme, as the family’s chronicler,   paints the pictures of their life in vivid, splashes of literary color:   You know his wife is a force of nature,  that his kids are experiencing things from a perspective that we as kids would have been lucky to see,  and that he himself can reckon with the defiant human spirit that every origin of man has that has allowed us to explore and exist on this planet.  Gets in touch with his “inner Viking”,  which is apt as hell.  They all are such an integral part of the book, I always want to say “The Bell Family”  as being the authors.   And if you want a book with a Pioneer soul?   Boom,  right here.    The Bells have removed themselves off the grid in such a fashion, a loopy militiaman on a mountain could pick up some tips.   What’s better, they have done it in a way that makes them happy, so it’s proof that you can live on a shoestring, with kids!   They don’t always need Corn Pops you know (I shamelessly love me some Corn Pops, which make me a bad, fat person).  

Graeme also doesn’t bore you with describing scenery you can look up on the internet, he tells you a bit about it, then describes the detail of dealing with people, broken parts,   and the anxiety of stepping out into what could be described as “a blank page”.   When was the last time YOU traipsed along in an old truck in another country, 5000 miles from home?   This is an adventure of the highest order,  in a world that many, myself included,  has lamented about “having no more adventure left.”

This book reminds me of another adventure book that I read many years ago, and actually bought after the man who wrote it came into the bar I worked at and told me some of his great stories.   Thomas Goltz’s Assassinating Shakespeare:  The Tale of the Bard in the Bush is the riveting tale of an American man from the boarder land of North Dakota/Montana finding himself in Africa, travelling the length of the continent in the late 1970s, performing Shakespeare with wooden puppets, while being pretty much destitute in a place he knew nothing about.  He became a minor celebrity over there…Graeme and Luisa may have heard of him in the paper or something.     I have had the pleasure of drinking and dining with this man,  and Mr. Goltz  is every bit the “swashbuckling adventurer/academic” that you’d expect.  He’s earned the Victorian Adventurer Moustache.    His book is very much like Graeme’s:  gritty,  unpolished,  and real.   The detail in the mundane is fantastic, and you see the parts of a story that are, in my opinion,  so much more important to me as an adventurer.   The liberal use of profanity is really the only difference.

I cannot state that enough.   Real is a big deal.  In this day and age,  its less “who you are” and almost always “The image of who you want to show the world”.  There is too much disguise, too much padding  to hide or muffle the realities of the world.     We Will be Free is a tale that removes those blinders, and says “HERE IS A TALE OF HIGH ADVENTURE!”   I could hear the drums in the opening credits from Schwarzenegger’s Conan the Barbarian playing with gusto when you open the book.    They have breakdowns!  They deal with shady folk!   They get  caught up in troubles that catch them off guard!   And they roll with the punches like a prize fighter and come out swinging.  Then into the teeth of the unknown again! 

I am sadly living the adventure life vicariously through them, at the moment,  but damn it,  It is gnawing at me to get out and do more traipsing about myself.   The Bells,  after this book was written,  have managed to drive all the way north,  to Alaska,  and back down again (I’ll apologize for the US some other time...it would take a while)  to Baja,  I think,  at the time I’m writing this.   

SO much adventure,  that Graeme and Luisa have put together another book!    There is more info here on their kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1423033955/travel-the-planet-overland-a-photo-book-and-guide    A how to guide on how to actually break free of the social bindings and be free on the trail?   YUS PLZ.      I say check it out.   Check out all of it.   I’m throwing my coin in soon as I have some!   New jobs take time to pay, you know?

LOOK! A BLOG/WEBSITE THING!  http://www.a2aexpedition.com/   If you get the book,   get it here.    I suppose you could get it from AMAZON,   but that outfit takes a bite out of what the Bells get…   Links to their Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all there.    What?  I am not as computery as most.   Not going to past all the links.

Yes, I have a copy.

No.   You can’t borrow it.   No.

Other things to do,  if you want to know more?   

The Centre Steer Podcast has a few fantastic interviews with the Bells from last spring and just this past winter (look, links!)

(http://centresteer.com/podcast/centresteer-25-visit-with-the-inlaws/     http://centresteer.com/podcast/centresteer-30-drop-the-mic/  )

I actually listened to the first while driving to Wilcox, Arizona for a job.   Sad Fact: if I was not on that project, I would have been in Flagstaff at Overland Expo 2015,  with the specific goal to meet the Bells and shake their hands. 230 miles.    I could have done it…

  And to look at cool rigs,  because, be honest,  they are all cool.   Couldn’t ever afford one,  but cool.  Can’t go this year either.    Le Sigh.

Anyway,  yeah.    Read the Book.    Support some adventure.    Get a slice of your own, and use the Bell’s as your inspiration.    Really,  Be Free.

Cheers all.