Run for the Mountains

For fifty-two years, Chanu, a Lahu-Lisu tribal man from northern Thailand, lived an adventurous life packed with danger as well as joy. Slave, farmer, prisoner, hunter, bandit, smuggler, soldier-guerilla, lover, winner, and loser-- Chanu wore many faces. His story spans a fascinating, tumultuous historical period in the infamous Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia. Follow Chanu and witness his life of unusual circumstances in Run for the Mountains. During some fifteen years of working, traveling, hunting and speaking with Chanu in his own language, Gordon Young recorded Chanu's poignant story and now shares this with the world.

Gordon Young was born in 1927 to American Baptist missionary parents in Banna, China. The family soon moved to Northeast Burma where Young hunted with Lahu tribal boys, learning by age ten to survive in mountain jungles alone, armed only with knife and bow. World War II impacted on Young's amazing childhood adventures in Burma and India. Later he served the U.S. Army in Korea, obtained a B.S. degree at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo; then moved to Chiang Mai, Thailand to work for the U.S. Government. There he field collected for museums, helped found the Chiang Mai Zoo, compiled the first informal ethnography of Thailand's northern tribes, and received “Great Hunter” status from a Lahu high chief. Naturalist-hunter-conservationist-ethnologist, Young's travels and tales span forty years throughout parts of Asia. A keen compassionate observer, his exciting storytelling also offers rare insight on vibrant peoples, cultures and wildlife in remote, seldom-trodden places. Other titles by Young are: The Hill Tribes of Northern Thailand; Tracks of an Intruder.