Lost Angel Walkabout—One Traveler’s Tales is a spirited collection of travel narratives recounting the haps, mishaps, and serendipitous adventures that give, travel-writer Linda Ballou, a sense of wonder and delight. Some of the stories like “Falling in the Footsteps of John Muir” and “Look Both Ways on Small Islands” are reflections that might make you glad you stayed home, while “River Wise” could inspire you to toss the TV clicker out the window and to explore our beautiful planet. All of the stories take you to special places where you share the sensual experience of being there without straining one muscle, getting altitude sickness, or tipping your canoe.
In roughly twenty short stories, travel writer Linda Ballou takes us with her up active volcanoes in Costa Rica, down hundred-mile rivers in the Yukon Territory, over combination jumps and oxers in Ireland, beneath the Sea of Cortez, and along unforgettable jaunts through deserts, woods, peaks, and valleys in both hemispheres. Her tales span years of traveling—sometimes alone, occasionally with her mother or life partner, and often with others in search of soft adventure. Brimming with action, intelligence, regional history, funny mishaps or tight squeezes, each story is set against a backdrop of nature’s jaw-dropping beauty. Ballou aims to share her world view, and through her Eco-alerts make the reader care more deeply about our vanishing resources and places of wild beauty.
Living in greater Los Angeles among millions of other lost angels keeping pace in a hurried world, Linda Ballou makes no bones about her need to seek equilibrium, solitude, and salvation in the sublimity of nature. Forget thousand-thread count sheets at luxury hotels or shopping for the latest bling. Like the great figures liberally noted in her pieces—Robert Frost, Jack London, John Steinbeck, John Muir—Ballou prefers the great outdoors and is intimately acquainted with it. She is a naturalist, a thoughtful traveler, one caring toward the environment and sensitive to local populations both near and far. And, she is a meticulous researcher.
Lost Angel Walkabout is richly detailed and poetic. It gifts the reader with the depth of observation in the clear and careful naming of the world around us—places, peoples, plants, birds, mountain ranges, animals, and sea creatures. More satisfying than naming is storytelling the authentic connection made with the inhabitants of land, sea, and sky; ravens and great spirits, fin whales the size of city buses, or Native Americans forced to flee their land. Because the author has connected deeply, so does the reader. Something is gathered from every place visited, and it seems impossible not to connect with our own highest and best self through Ballou’s experiences—not to mention wanting to get up and go there.
Linda Ballou keeps good company too and includes interviews with renowned travel writer Tim Cahill and endurance rider Lari Shea. Like her travel writing hero Tim Cahill, Ballou sees humor in many of the predicaments she stumbles into, or out of, or overboard after.
Don’t be surprised to find her on the back of a galloping horse yelling “Yee Haw!” and let out a yell yourself.
Reviewed by Barbara Milbourn, a writer and editor in Nashville, Tennessee
Excerpt
The world has been spinning for about twenty minutes now. It is the top of the fourth day of my horse-pack trip into the High Sierras. When I stepped over a rill meandering through the grass, I sank into the moss and lost my balance. My fall was shortstopped by a jagged branch, jutting upward from a slumbering log that lodged in my rib cage. Fired by John Muir’s rapturous account, “My First Summer in the Sierra,” I had never asked myself the question: What would happen to John if he tripped while scrambling up14, 000-foot granite peaks, thrilling to animals, plants and rocks alike? I simply decided I had to experience for myself chattering creeks and celestial light on the mountains.
Now, flat on my back yards away from the Pacific Crest Trail in the John Muir Wilderness, the reality of my isolation has set in. It is a five-hour horseback ride from our camp in Cascade Valley to the nearest telephone. A hardy backpacker might come this way, or the occasional horse tour company, but they have all settled into their respective camps for the night. Cell phone transmissions don’t travel through the granite walls that John loved so well, and something inside my body is terribly wrong.
Professional Reviews
Writers's in the Sky-Yvonne Perry
Tales to Remember
With each story I read in Linda Ballou’s book, Lost Angel Walkabout, I thought, “This is the best story in the book.” Then, I would turn the page and find that the next adventure was even more interesting.
I love the way the author weaves accurate and little known native history into each story. This information isn’t what your typical tour guide might spout from a memorized script. This book and its information comes from roughing it in the wilderness in some remote sites where most of us would not go with a group much less alone, which is Linda’s favorite way to travel. The aloneness is rejuvenating for her as she listens to nature and the spirits that dwell in each mesmerizing place speak to her.
As for aloneness, Linda says, “Much is said of the virtues of connecting with local cultures, but in aloneness you can connect with the forces that shaped them.” Profound wisdom!
Not all of the trips were taken alone, however. I was especially touched by the story titled “Water Dogs” because of the tender way Linda showed grace and understanding to her 75-year-old mother who was along on a snorkeling trip. Linda was so creative in bringing the fish to her mom since Mom couldn’t dive under and hold her breath long enough to see them near the cave entrance below the water. But this story is also a favorite because of the humorous way Ballou depicts the cast of characters. In fact, her sense of humor in telling the story not only made me feel like I was on location with her, it gave me a sense of her lively personality.
What I didn’t expect, but found pleasantly refreshing was the spiritual aspect Linda brought into each tale. Her trips are inspired by her spirit guides, of whom she says, “Guides are simply that—guides. They try to direct you on an ever-changing path to soul-stirring moments, but the responsibility for the journey is ultimately yours.”
So, I guess that’s why Linda doesn’t blame her guides for forgetting to take her silk underwear with her on the trip to Dorothy Lake. She nearly froze to death when the zipper of her sleeping bag broke and exposed her backside to the elements. What’s an adventure without risk, right? And a little aroma from being wrapped in damp horse blankets to survive that night.
Tim Cahill’s interview was a very special treat and served as an interlude to gear the reader up for more action and adventure. Having taken the time to chat with one of her favorite travel writers shows that this author had credibility in both the writing and traveling world.
Another thing that makes this book intriguing and sets it apart from other travel/adventure books is the eco alert at the end of many chapters. It’s sad to know that many of the places Linda recounts in her stories are no longer the quaint, rural, peaceful spiritual nests they were at the time of her visit. They have been ruined by greedy deforestation, over-fishing, and toxic waste. This was an unexpected call to action in our effort to care for the beauty of our Mother Earth.
Throughout the book, the author’s storytelling style is a great blend of travel journalism and real life experiences and spiritual insight that entertain and inform. Highly recommended reading.
Real Travel Adventures
Lost Angel Walkabout by Linda Ballou is one of the most beautifully written travel books I have ever read. Linda tells her personal experiences of her many travels in different continents and environs. She is well-known as a top adventure travel writer, and her tales of her intrepid soul's search for beauty in the wilds and her ability to rouse physically to any demands of the setting will thrill the reader. She increased my desire to become more physically fit so that I could do some of the things she is daring and fit enough to do. She grew up in Alaska and has always loved horses. Her travel tales about returning to that wonderful environ and her experiences in many different places which involved riding horses are so beautifully inspiring. Linda also leads walkabouts in Los Angeles. I highly recommend her book as a treasure you will want to read, and then to re-read aloud to anyone who might want to listen. Her use of words is very commanding and her descriptions so vivid you will feel you have traveled alongside her and seen all the beauty of the surroundings which she so deeply appreciates. This is a MUST READ!
Bonnie Neely-Editor RealTravelAdventures.com
National Association of Baby Boomer Women
This is a spirited collection of travel narratives, a beautifully written collection of personal experiences of Linda’s many travels in different continents and environs.
It is easy to see why Ballou is a well-known adventure travel writer, each of the stories takes you to a special place and allows you to share the sensual experience of being there without straining a muscle, getting altitude sickness or losing control of your horse.
Her use of words is commanding and her descriptions so vivid you will feel you have traveled alongside her and seen all the beauty of the surroundings which she so deeply appreciates. Here’s an example, from the chapter titled, “Stepping Outside of the Big Box,” which describes a February trip to Arizona’s Sonoran Desert:
“…A warming lunch and a snooze later, the sun was shining. I headed up the canyon to walk along a path tracing a chatty creek full of itself from the recent rains. Fast-moving clouds morphed from threatening gray to billowing white in a cobalt sky. The granite spires of the Baboquivari Range were now cloaked in a dazzling cape of fresh snow. I rock-hopped the bulging creek lined with gray willow, sycamore and cottonwood trees bereft of leaves… What is often described as a “vast wasteland” by those hurtling through the desert at 75-miles per hour in hermetically sealed automobiles, is, upon closer inspection, an on-going act of cooperation between plants, animals, and sometimes humans to survive.”
Ballou’s tales of her intrepid soul's search for beauty in the wilds and her ability to physically handle the demands of her settings will thrill you. (Not to mention that they may possibly incite you to become fit enough to actually see yourself doing some of the things she is daring and athletic enough to do.)
Some of her tales, like “Falling in the Footsteps of John Muir,” about an accident she experienced four days into a horse-pack trip into the High Sierras, and “Look Both Ways on Small Islands,” which details her interrogation by French gendarmes while visiting a Club Med in Tahiti, will make you glad you’re just reading of her painful experiences – not actually living them.
But don’t despair. She not only lived to tell these tales, she actually manages to make them somewhat funny. Besides, MOST of the stories are upbeat and inspiring, while those that contain her “Eco-Alerts” are also informative.
You’ll enjoy this book and come away wanting to read it again!
By Anne Holmes
