Mireya Mayor went from cheering on the sidelines for the Miami Dolphins to cutting through rainforest with a machete as a National Geographic explorer and primatologist. That is the whole pitch of the book, and it is also the thing that made me pick it up. The title tells you most of what you need to know. Pink Boots and a Machete. Femininity and a blade, carried at the same time, by the same person, who did not see a reason to choose between them.

The memoir moves between two lives that should not belong to one resume. She was an NFL cheerleader. Then she found science late, fell hard for the study of primates, and ended up in the field tracking lemurs in Madagascar, getting charged by a gorilla in the Congo, sleeping in places most people would never agree to visit. She co-discovered one of the smallest primates in the world, a mouse lemur, and the book gives you what that actually involves. Mud, illness, equipment that fails, fear that is not the cinematic kind.

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What I liked is that she does not flatten herself to fit the explorer role. She kept the parts of her that did not match the stereotype of a field scientist, and she is funny about the gap between how she looks and what she does. The writing is plain and quick. She is not reaching for big statements about nature. She tells you what happened, and what happened is usually more interesting than a tidy reflection on it would be.

The thread that stuck with me is the refusal to choose. Mayor did not decide the cheerleader and the scientist were two different people, one of whom had to be left behind. She carried both. For me that is the real subject under the adventure stories. You can come from one place and end up somewhere that has nothing to do with it, and you do not have to apologize for the road that got you there.

It reads fast, lighter than I expected for the subject, and that is mostly a strength. A few chapters skim past episodes I wanted more time inside, and now and then the tone stays upbeat when the situation was clearly grim. But I would rather a memoir undersell its hardship than milk it.

If you have any interest in fieldwork, in conservation, or just in someone changing direction completely and making it stick, this one is worth your time. I closed it wanting to know what she did next.

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Journey & Adventure

The spirit of adventure and personal transformation in this memoir connects with:

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