Cowboy Now : Life and Death in the Dim Light of a - Hardcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Brett Carlson has worked in Montana with troubled youth as a wilderness instructor, sold software as a salesman in Silicon Valley, and coached high school football. He is a born communicator.

Carlson has traveled and explored fifty countries on six continents. His love of mountain climbing has put him on icy peaks in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Morocco, Spain, France, Turkey, Canada, and America. In addition, Carlson is an avid runner, cyclist, and a staunch chess enthusiast. Carlson has recently begun working on his next novel.

Monthly, he speaks at juvenile detention facilities on various motivational topics. He lives in northern California.

Aus dem Klappentext

In January of 1996, nine men from separate regions of the world America, Canada, Chili, and Britain ventured into the Patagonian mountains. Their goal was the second west-to-east crossing of the Northern Patagonia Ice Field, the fourth largest ice field in the world. Patagonia is world-renowned for some of the worst weather on planet earth, storms can last weeks and winds often reach two hundred miles an hour. Three weeks into a scheduled five-week expedition, and directly in the middle of the ice field, the team was attacked by a massive, unrelenting blizzard. Three days into the storm, after their tents were destroyed and supplies were dwindling, they clung to life in snow caves for two agonizing weeks, slowly starving while they battled for their lives.

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February 27, 1996

The man approached the farmer. He had just leaped from his motorized canoe, which was anchored to a tree two hundred yards along the lakeshore to the west. He was well dressed: jeans, dark blue long-sleeve shirt, working boots, a bright red baseball cap, and pilot glasses. He stood six feet, two inches tall and sported a well-groomed mustache. The farmer noticed and instantly liked the man s oversized, shiny silver belt buckle. The man reached out his hand. The farmer shook it politely.

"Hello," the man said.

"Hello," the farmer responded.

"I understand you have a farm here in this valley, and you run cattle up the valley toward Patagonia during the summer months."

"Yes."

The man pulled a wad of money from his pocket. "I need a favor." The farmer glanced at the money. "I have a group of men coming off the ice field in the next week, and I ll need you to give em a lift by canoe to the eastern side of the lake." The man, hand outreached, offered the farmer the wad of money.

"They have been on the ice field?" the farmer asked.

"Yes, for about six weeks now should come through here in no more than five or six days."

"My friend, go back to the north from where you came. My family has lived here for six generations, working this land and raising cattle. I am sorry, but the storm that just came through here was the worst in the last one hundred and fifty years. Your friends are dead. Go back to the north and forget them."

"Oh no, I assure you they are alive."

"Friend, no person on this earth could have survived the winds and snow that just crossed that ice field no man, no matter how strong." He paused, and looked east up the valley toward the Patagonian Ice Field. "Up there, people die all the time in much lesser storms."

"I assure you, they lived," stated the man.

"How can you be so sure?"

"While flying a search-and-rescue mission over the region, I saw them!" The man s hand was still outreached, still offering the money.

"Oh my friend, I am sorry, but you saw dead bodies."