Skip to main content
Land of Lost Borders by Kate Harris book cover
2019: Kate Harris, Land of Lost Borders

2019: Kate Harris, Land of Lost Borders

Print | PDF

Description

As a teenager, Kate Harris realized that the career she craved—to be an explorer, equal parts swashbuckler and metaphysician—had gone extinct. From what she could tell of the world from small-town Ontario, the likes of Marco Polo and Magellan had mapped the whole earth; there was nothing left to be discovered. Looking beyond this planet, she decided to become a scientist and go to Mars.

In between studying at Oxford and MIT, Harris set off by bicycle down the fabled Silk Road with her childhood friend Mel. Pedaling mile upon mile in some of the remotest places on earth, she realized that an explorer, in any day and age, is the kind of person who refuses to live between the lines. Forget charting maps, naming peaks: what she yearned for was the feeling of soaring completely out of bounds. The farther she traveled, the closer she came to a world as wild as she felt within.

Judges' Comments

In Lands of Lost Borders, Kate Harris recounts her multi-year adventure with a female friend as they travel through Central Asia, most of the way by bicycle. Harris’s studies in history and science inform her descriptions of their efforts to follow the routes described by her childhood hero, Marco Polo, through the Caucasus Mountains and Tibetan Plateau to the Siachen Glacier. Although there is much hardship and some danger on the journey, Harris’s lively account emphasizes the kindness and hospitality the two friends experienced on their life-changing journey along the Silk Road. 

Learn More

Explore the works of our previous Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction winners.

×