Seasick on a rust bucket

The literature of outdoor adventure has become diluted in recent years. Writers, editors and publishers have, as we know, gone “extreme” -- as in the more harebrained the idea and the more death-defying the undertaking, the better. Sometimes, it seems, the best is when the two circumstances team up and become death-inducing.

The grand outdoor writing that inspires wonder and sets us right with nature is cluttered with a relentless flow of books that leaves us muttering jeez, rather than gee-whiz.

“Extreme,” when taken to the extreme, serves up protagonists whom we don’t admire, embarking on some dangerous, even wacky, escapade for dubious reasons and scant reflection.

They end up, of course, outmatched by nature, escaping by the skin of their teeth or not. A variation finds more or less ordinary or promising people who run into dreadful luck outdoors and pay with life or limb. There is a comic book, advertising-copy morality to these kinds of tales.

Presumably readers of these copycat accounts are chastened by the reminder that nature, despite all the insults delivered by us humans, strikes back.

There’s a more practical lesson here: Readers need to spoon through lots of broth these days to find books worth savoring.

Redmond O’Hanlon, for instance, is an adventurer worthy of the word -- a credentialed naturalist, a rompish wanderer, a sparkling armchair companion, a bit of a goof and also a smashingly evocative writer.

If you have traveled with him along jungle rivers in three previous books, and he is not the sort to travel alone, you might have daydreamed about receiving one of his phone calls. Out of the blue, you hear an Oxford accent, quivering with excitement: “Hullo, Redmond here. And I’ve been thinking, how would you like to join me on a trip to ....”

Oh dear, you reply. It’s going to be so much trouble canceling all those commitments. “But of course,” you hear yourself saying, “sign me up.”

The former natural history editor of the Times Literary Supplement, O’Hanlon has taken us along on weirdly wonderful and comic -- though not comic-book -- trips in the Amazon basin, in Borneo and up the Congo River in Africa. This time, his destination is not the jungle. His school-age daughter, Puffin, is ill and hospitalized. He cannot wander far.

How about a look at the wild places at home in Britain? Dear readers, how about signing on with a fishing trawler and heading out into the open ocean, north and west of the British Isles?

It has taken long effort to set this up, but conditions have finally arrived. It’s winter in the subarctic ocean; there is a hurricane offshore, and the rust bucket called Norlantean must head into it and keep fishing to meet the bank payments. Perfect.

Just don’t wear anything that’s green in color and don’t say the word “rabbit” while you’re aboard, superstitions abound on the oceans.

“Trawler” begins in familiar O’Hanlon fashion, as in, “Oh, what have I got myself into?” Once underway and after fighting seasickness, more or less, to a standoff, O’Hanlon shifts form. Most of the remainder of the story is told, tape-recorder fashion, through the manic, sleep-deprived and coarse monologues of men who fish, quarrel, eat and every so often rest aboard this storm-tossed, claustrophobic and odoriferous boat.

This is a book that trusts readers to bring along all they know of harrowing weather at sea. For in the main, this is not a descriptive book but an atmospheric account of men absorbed by hard work, a story about where seafood comes from and the mysteries of the deep ocean, a tale of giddy exhaustion, lore, superstition, lust, camaraderie, courage, science and getting the bills paid.

As a naturalist, O’Hanlon also intends for readers to carry away from this book a real-life understanding of the pressures humans are placing on the oceans. New varieties of fish are being hunted in ever more difficult locations as more familiar species dwindle in numbers. This accelerating process is at the heart of “Trawler,” as is the scientific scramble to figure out even the basic life cycles of deep-water fish before they are gone.

O’Hanlon earns his space on library shelves by reminding us that the outdoors is not merely a venue for extreme self-aggrandizement. He ventures to the edge, yes, but with his keen wits about him and with no small measure of humility. In that wild and exhilarating junction where human and nature meet, he pursues the joys of discovery. There is a time-honored description for such work: high adventure.

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EXCERPT

First date with a storm magnet

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O’Hanlon meets his new home away from home, the trawler in which he and shipmates will head into a winter hurricane.

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So we pulled on our second sweaters (naval blue), took off our shoes in the slush, clambered into our oilskin trousers (his: yellow; mine: bright orange; and Luke showed me that it was possible not to strangle yourself in the curl of rubberized braces), put on our yellow sea-boots. To our left, the sixteen-wheeler articulated trucks, the giant refrigerated transports, waited in their loading bays. To our right, on the edge of the quay, a line of Herring gulls stood, at strict gull-personal-space intervals, between the big mooring-bollards, disconsolate, not in talking mode, staring out to sea, their feathers puffed up against the cold. Along to our left one of those derelict trawlers was berthed: her upper hull had once been painted orange, her wheelhouse and decking white; but she was now so streaked and stained and patterned with rust, her steel plates so bobbled with layers of paint and rust, that she seemed alive, to be herself and no one else, to have grown old and used and wrinkled, and was now, where she lay, close to death. To my surprise, I saw that the diesel-tanker truck parked on the quay beside her actually had its fuel hose extended over her stern; that men in back of a container lorry were lobbing empty white plastic fish-boxes on to her deck....

“The Norlantean!” said Luke, quickening his pace. “Isn’t she beautiful? What a conversion! Look at that! Wow! Redmond! You’d never guess she was the old Dorothy Gray.”

A young man with short dark hair and a prematurely ragged face, dressed in a red oilskin jacket, yellow oilskin trousers and blue rubber gloves, was chucking the white plastic boxes down through a hatch.

“Hi,” said Luke, and introduced us. “We’re from the Marine Lab. Can we stow our kit somewhere?”

“Aye,” said the young man, with a lopsided grin. “I’m Sean, like the film star. Dump it up on the bow.” He had a strong harsh Caithness accent. “When you’re ready I’ll show you the cabin. And boys!” he called after us. “Welcome aboard! And the forecast -- it’s for a Force 12!” He gave an explosive little laugh.