A Conservationist’s Paean to Siberia’s ‘Sacred Sea’

BAIKAL: Sacred Sea of Siberia by Peter Matthiessen, photographs by Boyd Norton (Sierra Club, $25 hardcover).

To most of us, the word Siberia suggests a vast gelid wasteland dotted with prison camps--a place of exile, harsh and unforgiving, where nothing grows. What a surprise, then, to discover, through both Matthiessen’s text and Norton’s striking photographs, that at least one corner of Siberia possesses lush greenery, grasslands, storybook houses, wildflowers, butterflies and birds--and one of the world’s great bodies of water.

Lake Baikal is the oldest and deepest lake in the world. Its floor lies more than a mile beneath its surface at one point, and scientists say that it has existed in much its present form for between 20 million and 30 million years. Poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, who was born in the region and who provides a foreword for this book, calls it “the blue heart of Siberia.”

In the summer of 1990, Matthiessen visited the lake and its surroundings in the company of musician Paul Winter (an old Baikal hand who brought his saxophone along and played it frequently), and wrote a sort of diary-essay about his experiences there. This text, which originally appeared in a slightly different form in The New York Review of Books, is fashioned with Matthiessen’s usual grace, informed by his usual awareness of environmental issues and scattered with his usual New Age-ish sentiments. If Lake Baikal is one-tenth as beautiful and still-pristine as the photos make it appear, neither grace nor sentiment nor--certainly--concern for its preservation is out of place.

THE ULTIMATE ADVENTURE SOURCEBOOK: The Complete Resource for Adventure Sports and Travel by Paul McMenamin (Turner, $29.95 paper).

This is a large-format, 432-page catalogue of opportunities worldwide for snowmobiling, bicycling, ballooning, hang-gliding, dog-sledding, para-sailing, rafting, Arctic trips, Nordic skiing, sky diving, kayaking, soaring, diving . . . Whew! I’m getting tired just writing all this down, and I’ve only listed about half of the covered activities so far. . . .Anyway, this is a remarkable volume, impressively comprehensive, full of maps and color photos and short descriptive paragraphs, but more important, full of names, addresses, phone and fax numbers, guide ratings, trip prices, special-event calendars and other such hard facts about adventurous pursuits all over the world. It may also be the first travel guide to carry a warning label: “Adventure sports and travel,” begins this sobering message on the inside front cover, “can involve substantial risks, and can result in damage to property, as well as significant injury, or death.” THE GUIDE TO THE ARCHITECTURE OF PARIS by Norval White (Scribner’s, $24.95 paper); and SAN FRANCISCO ARCHITECTURE by Sally B. Woodbridge, John M. Woodbridge and Chuck Byrne (Chronicle Books, $16.95 paper).

White’s intensely detailed but only sporadically illustrated guide to the buildings, monuments, parks and such of Paris--well-designed and not--is obviously well-researched and just as obviously highly opinionated. Of an elementary school on the Rue Dunois, he writes, “Fins, slopes, mirror glass--the worst sets from ‘Star Trek.’ ” The reader may not agree with all of White’s assessments, and may find comments sometimes arch, sometimes obscure--but this is a dandy book, and would be an amusing companion on a stroll through the City of Light. More than 2,000 structures and all 20 arrondissements are covered, and 58 walking tours suggested.

The San Francisco volume, listing more than 1,000 of the buildings, parks, public artworks, etc., throughout the Bay Area, is a no-frills guide--illustrated, yes, but with postage-stamp photos. It makes no value judgments, merely identifying buildings, with a bit of history and architectural description attached. It seems most suitable to architectural specialists or the preservation-minded.