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Review by Bruce Tierney
When publishers first approached Tim Cahill about collecting some of his magazine articles in book form, he already had a title in mind: Jaguars Ripped My Flesh. It was something of a "raspberry," directed toward the naysayers who had told him that there was no market for his work. Subsequent anthologies, A Wolverine Is Eating My Leg and Pecked to Death by Ducks carried the joke to (and past) the point of no return. The title of his latest book, Pass the Butterworms, refers to an epicurean delight better left to senses other than taste, in my estimation.
Cahill's business card reads, "Tim Cahill, Remote Journeys Oddly Rendered"; certainly an apt description for what he offers his readers. By turns funny and poignant, quirky and insightful, Cahill leads us on adventures to the back of beyond: to the Maranon River in the Peruvian Andes, where his friend Patchen Miller has mysteriously disappeared; horseback riding in Mongolia, where he masters the punishing equine gait known as "the Mongolian Death Trot"; and kayaking in the treacherous waters off British Columbia, where he tests his mettle against the elements.
"It was embarrassing sitting upside down in this boat, with my head pointed to the bottom of the sea, blinking furiously while my nostrils filled up with seawater. There is, as most people know, a nifty technique called the Eskimo roll. It's a simple twist of the hips, combined with a swift swirling paddle stroke. The submerged kayaker bursts up out of the sea, shakes the water from his hair, and paddles on . . . Sadly, I have never been able to actually complete an entire Eskimo roll."
In a chapter entitled "North Pole, the Easy Way," Cahill laments the ease with which one can reach the polar regions these days, as opposed to the rigors faced by the early Arctic explorers. On a Russian trawler, Cahill and several well-heeled companions journey comfortably (more or less) to the ice camp. Although he declines to share the names of his fellow travelers with his readers, Cahill refers to them regularly by title: The Man Whose Luggage Was Lost, The Dreaded Couple Who Did Not Share My Political Opinions, The Woman Who Climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro at Seventy, The Tina Turner of the Orient, and (my favorite) The Man Who Didn't Get It.
©1997, ProMotion, inc.