Over the Edge: Death in the Grand Canyon

[rachelmanija]

I am browsing a book on accidents in the Grand Canyon, blurbed by Tony Hillerman. It combines apparently solid reporting with extraordinarily melodramatic asides. I just now hit the section on incidents involving venomous creatures (very rare) which says people's fears of them are overblown and they shouldn't think of them as "death-slaves of the Grim Reaper."

Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon

Comments

[graydon]

death-slaves implies they're not associates with shares and a decent retirement package and other good stuff. Tsk.

The Grim Reaper's been around since forever, and has had time to develop first-tier management practices.

[rachelmanija]

Death-shareholding associates of the Grim Reaper: not as good a name for a metal band, or even better?

[graydon]

Probably too long, but:

Associates of the Grim Reaper
Associates of Death (works better than the former)
Working With the Reaper
Death-Shareholding (umlauts needed to go somewhere in that one!)
(You die) We Retire (not a metal band name, but something)

All seem vaguely plausible.

[mme_hardy]

Bravo.

[monanotlisa]

*giggle*

[lilacsigil]

Well, next time I see a snake I'm going to tell it to unionise.

[cyphomandra]

Well, I hadn’t previously, but *now*...

[genarti]

Right? Now any time I see a picture of something venomous I'm going to have to tell it what an excellent death-slave of the Grim Reaper it is.

[monanotlisa]

THIS IS THE COMMENT I WANTED TO MAKE. :) Thank you kindly.

[skygiants]

Thus guaranteeing that I will never think of them as anything else!

[yhlee]

HA HA HA HA HA

I love how you find these things in books. =) I should stop reading grimdark cybersecurity/military strategy theory books!

[isis]

Title and author? I think this is relevant to my interests.

[ivy]

The same authors did "Off the Wall: Death in Yosemite", which I liked about as much as I liked "Over the Edge: Death in the Grand Canyon". Farrabee also did "Big Walls, Swift Waters", which is more of a coffee table book about Yosemite Search and Rescue, rather than an informative-to-encyclopediac list of all the deaths. I liked it less well, but people who aren't SAR themselves sometimes disagree with me on that.

[rachelmanija]

Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon by Michael Patrick Ghiglieri and Thomas M. Myers.

[tazlet]

There is also a "Death in Yellowstone" - idiots keep wandering off the walkways and get dissolved. Nor are Buffalo cuddly.

[rachelmanija]

I know those were nearly all death by stupidity (the Grand Canyon book keeps annoyedly noting that once again, most deaths are men and due to failure to heed warnings or exercise common sense like "poisonous snakes are not for kissing on the lips"), but some of those stories were so horrific that I think I can live happily never visiting Yellowstone.

[tazlet]

How hard is it to obey the signs and stay on the boardwalk? Worked there when I was in college and we were not nice about fools like the touron who put honey on his hand to take a cute picture with a bear. But then I'm a ranger's daughter, and YP can be sublime.

[maplemood]

I have found my new, all-time favorite combo of words. And former slaves of the Grim Reaper unionizing and demanding better working conditions sounds like the plot of a Discworld book. :)

[nenya_kanadka]

"Death-Slaves of the Grim Reaper" really has a ring to it, doesn't it? :D

And if not Discworld, maybe Rivers of London?

[mme_hardy]

Am I the only one who think it sounds like porn?

(slinks away)

[rachelmanija]

La petit mort slaves of the Grim Reaper!

[enemyofperfect]

Totally not the only one! I imagine the personification of death makes a nicely implacable master, if you're into that kind of thing.

[lokifan]

*cackles*

[mme_hardy]

I own the Yosemite one; clearly I need this.

[kore]

Hah, I remember that one. I might have an older version, I remember the prose style wa kind of baffling.

[carbonel]

I recently spent a few days at Glacier National Park, and one of the bookstores had a book about all the deaths that had occurred in the park (something like 268 of them).

I hadn't previously realized this was an entire subgenre.

[kore]

Oh hell, there are places like Yosemite that will sell you books about the murders that have occurred there.

[melita66]

Also in the genre, Accidents in North American Mountaineering, which is published every year. It includes dissections of what went wrong and how to avoid the problems.

My dad had most of the deaths-in-national-parks books. He'd worked in the parks as a young man, then for the US Forest Service and vacationed in them. Then he discovered the mountaineering accidents reports and would have me find them (because he wasn't on the internet).

[kore]

....now that sounds kinda fascinating. Are they online?