Stories from the Dirt

Riding tubes in Venezuela. BASE jumping in Europe. Climbing big walls in Yosemite. Riding bulls in Texas. These first-person stories from acclaimed climber and adventurer John Long may be vastly different in content, but they share an identifiable emotional texture, tone and delivery, and fundamentally are of one piece. This is storytelling at its best—nonfiction that reads like fiction. In Stories from the Dirt, the action leaves you breathless, but it’s the characters that really leave a lasting mark. Like all stories worth a damn, this collection is all about the people.

“John Long is a genre unto himself. Few other writers can match his lean and unpredictable prose, and this latest collection proves that he remains a shrewd witness of today’s cutting-edge adventure sports.” —Andrew Bisharat, climber, National Geographic writer, and editor of eveningsends.com “John Long makes me sick—with envy, I mean. How a futuristic ultra-elite-athlete became a truly accomplished writer of literary adventure stories—delivering complex emotions and characters alongside throat-grabbing thrills—is, well, nothing short of miraculous.”—Daniel Duane, Men's Journal contributing editor and author of Lighting Out: A Golden Year in Yosemite “No one spins literary adventure yarns like award-winning author John Long. In Stories From the Dirt, Long writes of his world travels, driven by discovery, a chance alignment of cosmic happenings, or by a ‘curious-sounding village or tribe that nobody knew much about.’ My favorite, ‘Last Place on No Map,’ is a literal journey to one of Dante’s rings of hell, a jungle slop hole in Brazil where ‘40,000 muddy men, effectively slaves, gripped by gold fever, sustained by jungle tubers and coconut juice,’ shovel and sluice the watery earth hoping to find a nugget. Most find disease and ruined lives, but Long finds a story. Then it’s onward, upriver to that curious-sounding village.”—Duane Raleigh, publisher, Trail Runner, Ascent, and Rock & Ice magazines

John Long is an acclaimed rock climber and author of more than forty books, including several in Falcon’s catalog. He is one of the most prolific adventure writers out there and has authored magazine articles, screenplays, documentary films, and television and movie scripts, as well as instructional rock climbing books.