Beryl Markham

thumb|Beryl Markham Beryl Markham (born Clutterbuck; 26 October 1902 – 3 August 1986) was a Kenyan aviator born in England (one of the first bush pilots), adventurer, racehorse trainer and author. She was the first person to fly solo, non-stop across the Atlantic from Britain to North America. She wrote about her adventures in her memoir, West with the Night. Quotes West with the Night (1942) The girl Markham was left to run wild with Kipsigis boys, wearing a cowrie shell on a leather thong around her wrist to ward off evil spirits. She ate with her hands, her first language was Swahili, and she could hurl a spear […] Markham practically grew up in the saddle; she told a friend that she felt better on a horse than on her feet. Introduction, Page Xii Always the weed returns; the cultured plant retreats before it. Racial purity, true aristocracy, devolve not from edict, nor from rote, but from the preservation of kinship with the elemental forces and purposes of life whose understanding is not further beyond the mind of a Native shepherd than beyond the cultured fumblings of a mortar-board intelligence. Book 1, Chapter 1, Pages 7-8 So far as I know I was the only professional woman pilot in Africa at that time period I had no freelance competition in Kenya, man or woman. Book 1, Chapter 1, Pages 9-10 Moreover, it seemed that the printers of the African maps had a slightly malicious habit of including, in large letters, the names of town, junctions, and villages which, while most of them did exist in fact, as a group of thatched huts may exist or a water hole, they were usually so inconsequential as completely to escape discovery from the cockpit. Book 1, Chapter 3, The Stamp of Wilderness, p. 32 Why I ran at all or with what purpose in mind is beyond my answering, but when I had no specific destination I always ran as fast as I could in the hope of finding one--and I always found one. Book 2, Chapter 5, He was a Good Lion, p. 57 A map says to you, "Read me carefully, follow me closely, doubt me not." It says, "I am the earth in the palm of your hand. Without me, you are alone and lost." And indeed you are. Were all the maps in this world destroyed and vanished under the direction of some malevolent hand, each man would be blind again, each city be made a stranger to the next, each landmark become a meaningless signpost pointing to nothing. Yet, looking at it, feeling it, running a finger along its lines, it is a cold thing, a map, humourless and dull, born of calipers and a draughtsman's board. That coastline there, that ragged scraw of scarlet ink, shows neither sand nor sea nor rock; it speaks of no mariner, blundering full sail in wakeless seas, to bequeath, on sheepskin or a slab of wood, a priceless scribble to posterity. This brown blot that marks a mountain has, for the casual eye, no other significance, though twenty men, or ten, or only one, may have squandered life to climb it. Here is a valley, there a swamp, and there a desert; and here is a river that some curious and courageous soul, like a pencil in the hand of God, first traced with bleeding feet. Book 4, Chapter 20, Kwaheri Means Farewell, p. 245 External links Category:Aviators Category:Memoirists from Kenya Category:Women from Kenya Category:1902 births Category:1986 deaths Category:Women authors from England