"A tale worth reading ... Mr. Benuzzi's paradoxical mixture of pride and
self-mocking humility is attractive; his courage is amazing; his story dramatic."
New York Times.
"The history of mountaineering can hardly present a parallel to this mad but
thrilling escapade."
Saturday Review.
"A wonderful story of crazy courage that warms the heart!"
Library Journal.
"For some of us this may be the book of its kind ... For this was an
adventure more poetic than practical, and that was its special quality ... If Signor
Benuzzi never climbs another mountain, this one was something to remember, and so is his
good and vivid book."
New York Herald Tribune Book Review.
"It was a mad venture but a gallant tribute to man's deep yearning for freedom ...
Appealing."
Kirkus Reviews.
"Several qualities lift this book to the top class of adventure stories. There is
the sense of style about the whole enterprise; to yield its maximum satisfaction, the
escapade had to observe a strict code ... More important, there is the spirit in which the
whole adventure was undertaken."
Times Literary Supplement.
Introduction
In 1938 Felice Benuzzi graduated from law school in Rome, applied for a
position in Italy's Colonial Service, and was posted to Ethiopia, then occupied by the
Italian Army. But World War II brought Mussolini's scheme of building a colonial empire in
East Africa to a quick end. The British, agreeing to assist Emperor Haile Selassie to
reclaim his throne, invaded in 1941. Instead of a career junior office in the foreign
service, Benuzzi, then thirty-one years old, found himself a prisoner of war in a remote
camp somewhere in the British East Africa territory of Kenya.
It was the season of the long rains, and the monsoon clouds sweeping up
from the Indian Ocean covered the sky each day with a leaden blanket that seemed as heavy
as Benuzzi's gloom. Then one evening, stepping from his hut within the
barbed-wire-enclosed compound, he looked up to see a beak in the clouds and the rising
mass of Mount Kenya, its sharp summit silhouetted like a great snaggletooth. Benuzzi
stared at the equatorial glaciers glistening in the moonlight, and suddenly he had an idea
that he says "crossed my numbed mind like a flash". So began one of the most
uniquely compelling adventures of our time.
No Picnic on Mount Kenya combines two of the great themes in
adventure literature: wartime capture and escape, and mountaineering challenge and
conquest. Unlike most mountaineering books of its era, however, this story of conquest is
not the standard fare of flag planting spurred by national pride; rather it is a tale of
three mountaineers struggling for a summit in order to reaffirm their humanity and, at the
same time. gird their loins for what lay ahead of their descent.
While No Picnic on Mount Kenya fits on the bookshelf alongside
those two other classics of escape from wartime oppression, Seven Years in Tibet
and The Long Walk, it has a plot twist that sets it apart; Benuzzi and his
comrades know, even at the outset of their escapade, that permanent freedom is impossible.
They are plotting what is essentially will be only an interlude: When it is over they will
have no choice but to return to the drudgery of their daily round.
"In order to break the monotony of life (in prison) one had only to
start taking risks again," Benuzzi writes as he and his comrades design their escape.
The risks are real. Sneaking out of camp, they may be shot. For the first two days they
must travel at night, across fields and past settlements. Once in the forest, away from
what Benuzzi calls "the human danger-zone," they will enter the "beast
danger-zone." Finally they will escape into the relative safety of the alpine tundra.
Every mountaineer and outdoor person reading this tale will feel kinship to Benuzzi here,
when he writes that "all the landscape around us reflected our happiness ...
green-golden sunrays filtered through the foliage ... bellflowers seemed to wait for the
fairy of the tale who would ring them. We were now into a world untainted by man's misery,
and bright with promise. Other dangers undoubtedly in store for us, but not from mankind,
only from nature."
The dangers they face will also be their delights: experiences that will
become memories they will draw on for the rest of their lives. Mount Kenya is like that. I
have been a mountaineer for thirty-five years , and I've been fortunate enough to have
travelled to many of the world's most secluded and exotic ranges. When I'm asked what my
favourite climb is, I don't hesitate to answer "Mount Kenya." The peak and
surrounding moorlands and forests are a delight of fanciful juxtapositions: elephants that
wander to the levels of glaciers, heather that grows to the height of trees, icicles that
straddle the equator. It is a mountain that has no easy way to the top: The regular route
is over twenty pitches of roped, technical climbing. But Mount Kenya is more than that.
While the climbing is superb, the approach to it is sublime. Hiking to the base of the
climb, you ascend through zones of bamboo, exotic rosewood, heather, giant lobelia, and
Jurassic-looking groundsels. The the forest your senses are honed (or at least they should
be) by the undercurrent danger created by the presence of Cape buffalo, elephant, and even
lion.
The latter danger is no exaggeration. On one of my ascents (I've been up
the mountain four times) a lion attacked a party that was one day ahead of us, pulling by
his leg a sleeping climber from his tent. The victim screamed and another climber from a
neighbouring tent grabbed a spoon and pot and rushed the lion, making all the noise he
could. The lion dropped the victim - no doubt saving his life - but not soon enough to
save his leg. Bongo Woodley, the warden of Mount Kenya National Park, showed up the next
morning with his large-bore Rigby .416 elephant rifle that had belonged to his
warden-father, and disappeared into the thick bamboo. He came back three days later, the
dead lion in tow.
It was Bongo's father. the well-known Bill Woodley, who was himself warden
of what was then known as Mountain Parks when, in 1974, the aging Felice Benuzzi made a
nostalgic return visit. Benuzzi was by then close to retirement. After the war he had
resumed his career in Italy's foreign service, gaining the rank of ambassador and serving
in Europe, Australia, Pakistan and Uruguay. He was returning home from one posting when he
stopped in Kenya to revisit the site of his youthful adventure. Woodley took him up in his
small Cessna, and they flew past the site of the old sawmill, up the Nanyuki River and the
sub-peak that he finally had ascended. Benuzzi remembered every detail of the landscape,
regaling Woodley with the story of his exploit.
For the rest of his life, until he died unexpectedly in 1988, his escape
from prison and his adventure on Mount Kenya was a source of personal pride and
inspiration. His wife, Stefania Benuzzi, a charming and cordial woman who lives in Rome,
said of he husband that
the war, the prisoner's camp, the Mountain. These were the three decisive
elements in [Felice's] life. The urge to be an independent individual, and the love f
freedom, prompted him to take the risks of this adventure. He returned to camp feeling at
peace with himself and with his life, and writing the book filled days behind the barbed
wire, until the end of the war. Then came the gratifying success of the book. Ever since,
The Mountain has accompanied us throughout our lives. Wherever we were, Mount Kenya was
there too.
Like the mountain with Benuzzi, No Picnic on Mount Kenya has
stayed with me since I first read it many years ago. Reading it again, I am struck by how
powerful his story remains, an adventure that is a kind of testament to the freedom I
strive to find each time I venture into the mountains.
Rick Ridgeway
February 1999
