Four corners
"At the tender age of nineteen, Kira Salak first tasted the freedom found in travelling abroad, and spent the next several years of her youth as a constant, impulsive traveler. Barely old enough to drink, she left her life behind - graduate school, a job, a boyfriend - to attempt the impossible, her dream of following in the footsteps of British explorer Ivan Champion, the first person to successfully cross the island of Papua New Guinea in 1927. In one of the most dangerous and mysterious countries in the world, a place where Western culture clashes violently with ancient traditions, Salak found a kind of moral testing ground. Motivated by something much deeper than simply wanting to be the first woman to make such a crossing, she composed this memoir even as she still searched for answers. Why would a lone traveler, a very young woman at that, want to embark on such a dangerous and mysterious trip? Where was her fear? Or was this all an attempt to court and indulge her fear for some larger purpose? No one, on the road or at home, could quite understand." "Kira Salak matches her adventures in these vivid and exotic landscapes with prose that is luminous and thrilling. More than a travel book or adventure story, Four Corners is a work of existential self-discovery, of being at great risk in places that are on the edge and ending up, most of the time, their equal."--BOOK JACKET.