Where The Bong Tree Grows

by James Ramsey Ullman

Mountaineer, travel writer, novelist, and Broadway producer James Ullman Ramsey documents his thirteen month trip across the islands of the South Pacific. He used every mode of transportation possible: commercial aircraft, tramp steamer, passenger liner, seaplane, canoe, and schooner to travel from Hawaii to Guam, Palau, Fiji, American Samoa, Tahiti, the Marquesas, and points in between, until going via schooner the last 3000 miles back to the United States and Los Angeles.

Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

James Ramsey Ullman (1907–1971) was an American writer and mountaineer. He was born in New York. He was not a high end climber, but his writing made him an honorary member of that circle. Some of his writing is noted for being "nationalistic," e.g., The White Tower.

The books he wrote were mostly about mountaineering.

His works include Banner in the Sky (which was filmed in Switzerland as Third Man on the Mountain), and The White Tower.

He was the ghost writer for Tenzing Norgay's autobiography Man of Everest (originally published as Tiger of the Snows). High Conquest was the first of nine books for J.B. Lippincott coming out in 1941 followed by The White Tower, River of The Sun, Windom's Way, and Banner in the Sky which was a 1955 Newbery Honor book. All of these titles became major motion pictures.

Ullman also authored John Harlin's biography Straight Up.

He also wrote the short story "Top Man", a story about mountaineers climbing K3, a mountain in India.

Beyond his mountaineering books, he wrote "Where the Bong Tree Grows," an account of a year he spent traveling through some of the most remote islands of the South Pacific.

He joined the American Mount Everest Expedition 1963 as official historian. Because of health problems he had to stay in Kathmandu. The book Americans on Everest: The Official Account of the Ascent was published in 1964.

Reviews

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

With an imprint date of 1963 I was sceptical about this title. What a delight: wonderful philosophical writing with a lovely humour, adventure travel writing at its finest. This treasure looks to be making top of my list for gifting this year: I have already researched used copies online.

[Paul Cornelius · Rating 4 out of 5]

Documentation of a a mid-life crisis is what this interesting travel narrative essentially amounts to. Ramsey was a fascinating individual. Competent as a Broadway producer--winning a Pulitzer--a mountaineer and historian of important mountaineering events and mountaineers, a novel of off the beaten path adventures, and a chronicler of two important travel journeys. The first occurred in the 1930s and described his trip from Peru, across the Andes, down the Amazon, which was published as The Other Side of the Mountain. Where the Bong Tree Grows, on the other hand, tells of Ramsey's thirteen month trip across the South Pacific from 1959 to 1960.

As I first stated, however, this is as much a book about a mid-life crisis as it is a simple travelogue. Ramsey was in his early fifties, fifty-one, and recently divorced, when he decided to up stakes and strike out from his New York City home for the South Seas. It was he said, a "dream." At the end, he also said he found the dream, in addition to the unavoidable signs of progress and (not)progress enveloping the region. Jet aircraft and new airports were just appearing in places such as Hawaii, Tahiti, and Bora Bora, as he was leaving. He feared mass tourism made so easy would ruin everything. It did. And he sort of documented that, too, in Fia Fia, a novel published just one year before Where the Bong Tree Grows. After reading Bong Tree, it's clear the inspiration for Fia Fia was Ullman's time on Bora Bora and Tahiti. New resort hotels sprouted up to accompany the expanded airports. Bulldozers, backhoes, graders, and asphalt layers moved in to cut down the jungle and clear roads. All roads and air routes led to Polynesia. Tiki culture was reaching its apex.

As for Ullman, not only did he travel to the more remote islands in trade schooners, living and succumbing to what he described as "Pacific Rot," where Western man (very few women apparently qualify) falls prey to "underwork, underworry [and does] not giv[e] a damn (p. 286)." Not only did he manage that, he also spent time trying to reorient himself and redirect his own life towards a purpose. I'm not quite sure, however, that he ever did so. He wrote Americans on Everest a year later. But not much came after that. That said, Ullman is perhaps the writer I admire the most these days. And the reasons are that he worked across several genres. The mountaineering and travel books belong on one side. The novels on the other. And it is the novels that are most special, because he incorporates ideas and a sense of passage from one time, one era into another within them. He isn't the greatest of novelists. But he is very good. And it's an enjoyable to see him work his travels into his novels. I admit I'm not much interested in the mountaineering works, for example, but he used them to write The White Tower, where he described an unforgettable storm atop a Swiss mountain that is as tactile and fearsome as anything Conrad ever wrote. At times, Ullman leaves you with imagery you cannot forget. And Bong Tree delivers on that score, too.

[Mind Bird · Rating 4 out of 5]

Old fashioned and out of print, but reading it is like taking a vacation trip with, maybe, John Wayne through the South Pacific islands in the 1950's. It is non-fiction, but 'way more interesting than Fia Fia, his forgettable novel set in that area.