To be able to read Beryl Markham’s memorable book was a feast of words onto itself. She uses analagous metaphors steeped in African legend, jungle truisms, earth bound realities and then she (the first woman bush pilot) takes you to the heights of flight over continents and an ocean.

She adds insight into political craziness. Against the backdrop of land ravaged by man, she almost seems to applaud when nature seeks its revenge and swallows him up whole, spits him out, without caring if he is humble, humiliated, fearful or victorious.

She honors the earth and its atmosphere as to make one solemn; I christen her words as sacred text. She never allows herself to be directly emotional, she unveils herself via events, scenes and other’s responses. She is brave and valiant – a true Murabi – the word for man, no longer boy.

I will read this book again as it is well written and I doubt I will ever find such poetry in today’s literature. I want to study it. It is a feat of brilliance, like her life. No matter what she put her mind to, she did it with Herculean effort, all of her heart and focused brain power. Her instinctive and intuitive, sensitive survival skills and tales of human suffering rolled off her tongue and onto the page in the same breath. You feel as you read her words that your are there with the same leverage, skill and eye witnessing as she writes with.

I have become a better writer because I read Beryl Markham.