Harley RustadReviews

Into the Valley
Review of the Vintage Canada paperback edition (2023) of the Harper hardcover original (Jan. 11, 2022)

He found himself talking with Jonathan Goldsmith, the actor who was appearing on television commercials as "The Most Interesting Man in the World" ... who remarked, "I think you might actually be the most interesting man in the world." Justin illegally climbed the most famous bridges in the United States, he became a Buddhist monk in Thailand, and he crossed snow-covered Himalayan passes in flip-flops.

While reading Lost in the Valley of Death it is quite likely that you'll be reminded of Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild (1996) about wilderness adventurer Chris McCandless (1968-1992), as there are many parallels. The life of Justin Alexander Shetler (1981-presumed dead 2016) was more extreme though and he travelled even further afield than McCandless, until finally ending somewhere in the Parvati Valley in Northern India.

See photograph at https://static01.nyt.com/images/2022/02/13/books/review/11Paterniti/11Paterniti-...
Photograph of Justin Alexander Shetler. Image sourced from his Instagram (link is still active as of September 2023).

Harley Rustad has done a superb job in reconstructing the story of Justin Shetler, even though the final mystery of his disappearance remains, as no body has ever been recovered. There are suspicions that the "baba" or so-called "holy man" who was his last travel guide may have murdered him for his money and possessions. Even that suspicion ended in mystery as the "baba" supposedly committed suicide in his prison cell after being arrested on suspicion of murder. That added a further aura of conspiracy hinting that authorities scapegoated the man in order to provide a quick solution and to prevent continued warnings to tourists of the dangers of travel in India.

See illustration at https://cdn.outsideonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/10/valley-of-death-just...
Illustration by Erin Wilson. Image sourced from Outside Magazine (link below).

The book also presents another possible alternative that Justin Alexander Shetler could still be alive and had intentionally wanted to disappear. There are examples of others in similar cases who have been found to be alive many years afterwards.

Each addition to missing-persons lists has begged the question: Of all the travelers who disappeared without a trace, who were lost or murdered - and who simply did not want to be found?

I read Lost in the Valley of Death through being introduced to it at the 2023 Lakefield Literary Festival.

See photograph at https://scontent-ord5-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/360093745_24345228695075920_1...
Author Harley Rustad (right) in discussion with moderator Johanna Schneller (left) and author Sheila Heti ("Pure Colour" (2022)) at the 2023 Lakefield Literary Festival, Canada.

Other Reviews
Seeking Enlightenment, He Disappeared into a Hiker’s Bermuda Triangle by Michael Paterniti, New York Times, January 21, 2022.

Trivia and Links
The author’s original article about Justin Alexander Shetler was Lost in the Valley of Death by Harley Rustad, Outside Magazine, December 13, 2018.

An interview with author Harley Rustad on the release of the book can be read at New Book looks at U.S. Backpacker Whose Indian Pilgrimage Ends in Mystery by Dana Gee, Vancouver Sun, February 11, 2022.

The Adventures of Justin Facebook page is here (link is still active as of September 2023).

I'm finding it hard to encapsulate how I felt about this book, even weeks after I read it.

Lost in the Valley of Death is ostensibly about Justin Alexander Shetler, a minor Insta celebrity within the outdoor adventurer niche. I had never heard of Justin before this book - a quirk of the internet being that a popular figure in one corner is unheard of in others - but I ended it feeling that the world is a slightly less friendly place without him.

The first half of the book vacillates between explaining the history of India as a popular travel destination and Justin's background as a child and young man. I found the information on India Syndrome and the lost hikers that preceded Justin to be really interesting and compelling. The author did a really good job of showing the larger picture that Justin's disappearance slotted into.

Harley Rustad paints an in-depth portrait of Justin, lovingly rendered, except for one thing. 60% through the book, Rustad drops a chapter that shifted things dramatically for me as a reader and it rapidly dropped Rustad in my esteem. Justin was sexually abused by his adult male babysitter as a child and after telling his parents, was stalked by this man; he followed Justin to various houses the family moved to escape him. Justin's parents breaking up and his mother moving Justin and herself states away was mentioned many times in previous chapters, with Rustad going in depth into how lost and isolated Justin felt. Yet Rustad didn't seem to think that this was pertinent information about the parents' marriage, why moving so many times was necessary, why his mother moved across country. This chapter then tells us that when Justin was 15 he was sexually assaulted by another adult man. These are noted like they are minor events, only worthy of a single mention, barely worthy of consideration as part of Jason's deep desire to find peace.

Suddenly the fact that Justin became estranged from his father in 2006 after his father's conviction for sexual battery made a lot more sense. When I read the acknowledgments, the author thanks Justin's father profusely, and while his father certainly should have been interviewed, I felt as if the author had been so very light on those topics were both because he didn't want to alienate Justin's sex-offender father by making clear how permanent the damage from sexual abuse is. Perhaps I'm being too harsh and it's because he simply didn't feel like he could properly articulate how such trauma has a profound and lasting effect on the life of the victim and their loved ones. For me, this was a huge detraction in what was an otherwise thoughtful, contemplative look at an earnest and intense man's search for inner peace.

I thought I'd like this better. I thought I'd admire the protagonist like I did Chris McCandless of INTO THE WILD. But Chris went off and didn't tell anyone where he was going. Justin Alexander was an Instragram star who seemed very troubled.

This story is going to haunt me for some time. Very well done with actual follow-in-the-footsteps research. This young man was lost in the valley of death, really just lost overall. Searching for something mostly and not really someone to fill a giant hole and void. It wasn't till 3/4 the way in that the ah-ha moment happened which explained so much of Justin's story. He had many adventures and pushed himself to his limits, but for what? He was a person who could not settle and that to me is just not peace. Sad story in many ways but he touched a lot of people and helped and gave hope to so many.

First the reservations, then the praise. This is a work of 'true crime', and like most of that genre of popular writing does not reach the realms of memorable literature. It follows the life of Justin Alexander, an American born in 1981 who was a survival expert, and rootless wanderer, and who went missing in 2016 in a forested valley of the Indian Himalayas, probably murdered by a sham holy man he had befriended Justin documented his adventures on Instagram, and seemed self-obsessed and narcissitic, flexing his biceps while he wrote motorbikes up the West coast of the US, or climbing trees on Palawan in the Phillipines. He was not articulate or eloquent, and reviewers who liken this book to Somerset Maugham for the age of the hashtag miss that entirely. Even the author Rustad is not a Bruce Chatwin or a Robert Louis Stevenson in terms of the quality of his prose, following this nomad. Now the praise: Justin watched and was inspired by Baraka the film as a young man and his model of spiritually questing travel and attempts to live vividly speak, for me, of all the 'seeker' style travellers one has met over the years. They may not be eloquent or highly educated or particularly humble, but they have a fierce appreciation of wonder and adventure, and this is refreshing to be around. There are many travellers like Justin, and for me this book is interesting in that it puts one such man in the frame for the reader to contemplate. He has probably died and while he lived he may have sometimes or often felt lonely on his journey, but he did not allow life to become humdrum, tawdry, trivial and banal. He did not allow life to seep away in nine-to-five safe domesticity. For all of the people like him, who go forth and adventure to places like Thai villages or Brazilian forests, while never entering their accounts in the world of literature, and leaving a flotsam of social media posts at best, this book is a tribute. It is good to be reminded of such people after two years when almost none of us have been travelling.

I'm not sure where I read about this book (maybe CBC?) but I thought it would appeal to me and it certainly did. It is about the history of the B.C. forestry industry, forestry management, involved environmental mavericks and of course the impact for indigenous people. The focus is on Vancouver Island, mostly around Port Renfrew and tells story of the discovery of a massive douglas fir named "Big Lonely Doug". The book is well written and informative i.e. only two in three logs is processed and used in the province and the rest are exported raw to mostly China, Japan and the U.S. without any value added locally. Wow!

p. 171 A fresh cutblock is a jarring sight to behold. Along each colossal stump runs a ridge of splintered wood where the tree fractured as it fell. Emily Carr in her wanderings of Vancouver Island in search of landscapes to paint, called these remains "screamers". They are "the cry of the tree's heart" she wrote, Wrenching and tearing apart just before she gives that sway and the dreadful groan of falling, that dreadful pause while her executioners step back with their saws and axes resting and watch. It is a horrible sight to see a tree felled, even now though the stumps are grey and rotting. As you pass among them you see their screamers sticking up out of their own tombstones, as it were. They are their own tombstones and their own mourners."

p.257 The B.C. forests were what Emily Carr called " Perfectly ordered disorder designed with helter-skelter magnificence".

Another interesting thing about the book was its discussion of intense storms over time (one in 1906) with huge winds that hurl huge areas of trees down tumble bumble as if they were pick-up-sticks. We have recently witnessed these hurricane force winds on a Gulf Island that snapped 18"diameter trees down and up ended huge trees and their root balls.

It was interesting to read about Ed Burtynsky filming Big Lonely Doug with a drone for his film Anthropocene . I have seen this film which was stunning (and frightening) but don't remember the Doug. However I have seen a few dougs in my time and mostly they fire off massive numbers cones for my inconvenience. Oh the trials!