Journeys into Beauty, Risk and Wonder
Seven Dances Along the Abyss is a book about risk, survival, and humility in wild places. Told through seven interwoven journeys, it blends adventure, natural history, western landscape writing, environmental reflection, and remarkable photography.
These seven stories focus on judgment, restraint, consequence, and wonder. They explore how experience is earned, how mistakes become teachers, and how humility may be the most important survival skill of all.
At its heart, Seven Dances Along the Abyss asks how we can live more intelligently within forces larger than ourselves. It is a book about the threshold where beauty and danger meet—and how that edge can change the way we see ourselves, the American West, and the living world around us.
“Few writers can describe both the physical demands of an expedition and the deeper emotional terrain beneath it. Burrows does both. His stories are gripping, reflective, and beautifully attuned to the fragile line between survival and wonder.”
— Michael Kennedy, American alpinist, photographer, and writer
39 Hours
39 hours documents Victor Major’s 39-hour ski traverse and descents of all seven 14,000-foot peaks within Colorado’s Elk Mountains. A journey that set a benchmark for stamina, timing, and risk. More than a speed effort, it is a meditation on what one experiences while moving rapidly through highly consequential terrain.
Racing Through the Storms
Nika Meyer’s 486-mile journey across Colorado’s high country in less than ten days tracks the physical and emotional strain of pushing through fatigue, violent storms, and isolation during a record-setting challenge. The story reveals human resilience and strength in a wild and raw natural environment.
Tenacity
The first ascent of Mount Logan during the 1925 MacCarthy expedition of Canada’s highest peak and one of the most remote and cold mountains on Earth. Before the climbing even began, the first ascenders walked over a thousand miles before hauling 18,000 pounds of resources into the Yukon and Alaska wilderness.
The End of the World
Jon Turk’s Ellesmere Island expedition was one of the great modern Arctic journeys. In 2011, he and Eric Boomer circumnavigated Ellesmere Island, traveling 1,495 miles around one of the most remote islands on Earth. Ellesmere offered every Arctic hazard: polar bears, crushing ice, open leads, frigid water, and a walrus that surfaced beside Boomer late in the expedition. A 104-day journey within an uninhabitable world is a modern epic.
White Sirens Calling
White Sirens Calling explores the seductive and dangerous pull of Colorado’s winter mountains. At its heart, the story is about decision-making under uncertainty. It asks why people who know the risks still step into consequential terrain, and how easily confidence can be mistaken for control. The mountains themselves—calling with beauty, silence, and the promise of deep snow, while demanding humility from anyone who enters.
The Opportunists
Colorado Black bears serve as a lens for understanding the shifting boundary among wild animals, climate, and human communities in this story. The story probes adaptation, encroachment, and the uneasy consequences of building our lives across theirs. The story investigates the risks for bears and wildlife in the rapidly growing and drought-stricken western United States.
The Neanderthal Echo
The Neanderthal Echo explores the ancient relationship between humans, animals, fear, and wild landscapes. It probes how deeply risk is embedded in human experience—and how our oldest instincts still shape the way we respond to nature.
Book a Presentation by the Author
Art Burrows discusses our history of managing risk through the lens of current adventurers.