ALL MY LIFE, the written word has provided a portal through which I can escape the humdrums and terrors of the age and lead the life of adventure to which I aspire. Many writers have provided doors for my escape, but none has been more influential than Jim Corbett, whose tales of tracking man-eating tigers in the Himalayas are immortalized in several books, notably Man-Eaters of Kumaon.
I was first introduced to Corbett’s stories by my father, who regaled my brother and me with hunting stories, true and otherwise, told around childhood campfires. But it wasn’t. I took it upstairs to a chair by a window from which I could see the snow on the Rockies—the first mountains I had ever seen—and was faced with a dilemma. I had time to read only one story before my mother returned. I chose “The Talla Des Man-Eater” for the simple reason that it was the longest.