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A review by bookly_reads
Ms. Adventure: My Wild Explorations in Science, Lava, and Life by Jess Phoenix
5.0
Ms. Adventure was so thoroughly what I wanted it to be: a fun, hyper-vicarious summer read that made me feel like I had taken mini-trips to Hawaii, Peru, and Mexico. During her fieldwork, Phoenix stays at sea for months at a time, or ascends higher than most of us will ever climb, to where the air can be dangerously thin and helicopters can't fly to the rescue. It seems that she took consistent scientific and personal records throughout these trips, which help shape the memoir with vivid details. I loved little insights like these, of environments I will probably never experience firsthand:
I had not anticipated the intensity of the sun bouncing off dark lava flows. [...]
The lava was making an almost musical sound as the new flow rolled over the older ground beneath. [...]
The taffy from hell stretched vivid and red, the insubstantial silver crust broken by the hammer, the flow’s dazzling scarlet insides exposed to the world.
I loved other things, too, about Phoenix specifically: She obtained her undergrad degree in history and was actively working in the archival field before she took some catch-up science courses and enrolled in a Masters program for geology. It's rare to hear from successful scientists who've made big career changes like this, and I thought that her education in the humanities was an important part of her perspective. I also appreciated her criticisms of the liberal arts, which was precisely what I felt when I started taking university-level science courses after obtaining a humanities degree: So much of the humanities is open to interpretation, and so many of the people I had studied with were so insecure that admitting any ignorance would have been unconscionable. By contrast, science allowed her to question everything, and work to find concrete answers. Of course, later she has critiques of scientists themselves, and how their hyper-specific specializations sometimes close them off to curiosity and subsequent discovery. I like that Phoenix confirmed all of my suspicions about the dangers of structuring intellectual curiosities around these limitations.
I also loved how deeply in her body she was throughout her fieldwork. She becomes at times mysteriously and urgently sick, or abruptly physically injured; one of her colleagues very sadly dies while they're at sea. I appreciated her honesty in depicting the experience of science and the body: how we thirst and hunger and sweat even while we're mesmerized by the volcanic eruptions happening in front of us, how our bodies are always making demands and expressing its limits even while we would prefer to carry on with our work.
The penultimate chapter, about filming a TV show for the Discovery channel, was such an interesting opportunity to see how unreliable and biased our media is (example: Discovery executives requested that Phoenix wear leggings while doing fieldwork on a volcano; she refused, as synthetic fibers would have literally melted into her skin. She later found out that Discovery had made no wardrobe requests of her male colleagues).
This book was a short, quick read that was perfect for a summer when travel is limited, and it was filled with little insights that I probably couldn't learn anywhere else. I really enjoyed it.
I had not anticipated the intensity of the sun bouncing off dark lava flows. [...]
The lava was making an almost musical sound as the new flow rolled over the older ground beneath. [...]
The taffy from hell stretched vivid and red, the insubstantial silver crust broken by the hammer, the flow’s dazzling scarlet insides exposed to the world.
I loved other things, too, about Phoenix specifically: She obtained her undergrad degree in history and was actively working in the archival field before she took some catch-up science courses and enrolled in a Masters program for geology. It's rare to hear from successful scientists who've made big career changes like this, and I thought that her education in the humanities was an important part of her perspective. I also appreciated her criticisms of the liberal arts, which was precisely what I felt when I started taking university-level science courses after obtaining a humanities degree: So much of the humanities is open to interpretation, and so many of the people I had studied with were so insecure that admitting any ignorance would have been unconscionable. By contrast, science allowed her to question everything, and work to find concrete answers. Of course, later she has critiques of scientists themselves, and how their hyper-specific specializations sometimes close them off to curiosity and subsequent discovery. I like that Phoenix confirmed all of my suspicions about the dangers of structuring intellectual curiosities around these limitations.
I also loved how deeply in her body she was throughout her fieldwork. She becomes at times mysteriously and urgently sick, or abruptly physically injured; one of her colleagues very sadly dies while they're at sea. I appreciated her honesty in depicting the experience of science and the body: how we thirst and hunger and sweat even while we're mesmerized by the volcanic eruptions happening in front of us, how our bodies are always making demands and expressing its limits even while we would prefer to carry on with our work.
The penultimate chapter, about filming a TV show for the Discovery channel, was such an interesting opportunity to see how unreliable and biased our media is (example: Discovery executives requested that Phoenix wear leggings while doing fieldwork on a volcano; she refused, as synthetic fibers would have literally melted into her skin. She later found out that Discovery had made no wardrobe requests of her male colleagues).
This book was a short, quick read that was perfect for a summer when travel is limited, and it was filled with little insights that I probably couldn't learn anywhere else. I really enjoyed it.