The Totem Pole (and a whole new adventure) Book

"It's an unusual fact that all people in wheelchairs are drunk magnets ... if your idea of help is being hauled up a flight of stairs by some pissed-up punter, risking severe injury, when in reality you were trying to cross the road, then you're welcome to it." Paul Pritchard had scaled mountains from the Andes to the Himalayas, but a small sea-stack in Tasmania was to be the scene of the most significant climb of his career. From his struggle for life, hanging semi-conscious from a rope after being struck by a falling boulder, to the subsequent fight to unify his body and severely damaged brain, Pritchard traces a path to another way of living. His previous award-winning book Deep Play: a Climber's Odyssey had explored the motivations that had driven him to seek out the dangers and rewards of top-level climbing. The Totem Pole puts everything he has learned about himself to the test on the long journey back from paralysis to the mountains. Fellow patients, his medical team, friends and family are skilfully and perceptively drawn, but sharing the heart of the book is the woman whose superhuman efforts at the rock face saved his life and who was to end their relationship during his rehabilitation. The resolution of their story shows Pritchard at his clear-sighted best. Humorous, cynical, lyrical and passionate, this is a story told without self-pity, but one which fathoms the depths of a quality of solitude that the author had once sought on the mountainside, but found to be the stuff of daily life after his injury. A compelling chronicle of one man's reawakening. --Alex HankinRead More