The Unlikely Thru-Hiker.
Derek Lugo is a young Black man making the rounds of the New York City comedy scene when a job ends unexpectedly. What to do with all that free time? He had read Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods, but never seriously considered hiking the Appalachian Trail. Until now.
A self-described metrosexual who’d rather have a tooth pulled than go a day without a shower, Lugo is an unlikely candidate to thru-hike the AT. At the end of his first exhausting day, when he sets up camp at Springer Mountain, it will be his first night in a tent.
Detail-oriented and a quick study, Lugo isn’t a newbie for long. It’s a pleasure to watch him learn his away around the gear and adapt to life on the trail.
If your focus is on ravishing descriptions of natural beauty along the hike, this might not be the book for you, though there are some. Rather, Lugo’s focus is on trail society and personal relationships. He soon falls in with a trail family, the “Moving Village,” and garners the trail name “Mr. Fabulous,” in honor of his meticulous grooming.
Lugo impresses his fellow hikers, and readers, with his unrelenting and intentionally positive thinking. He refuses to let the difficulties and downsides of trail life to get him down. This is one trail memoir that indulges very little in complaining or recounting discomforts and heroics along the way.
Instead, the book is chock full of a genuine warm-heart and a lot of offbeat humor. Lugo had me chuckling more often than I can remember for any other trail memoir than perhaps Bryson’s masterpiece.
But the book is not all lighthearted. There is deep emotion too. Lugo’s descriptions of his encounter with the elderly woman who had been “looking for Mr. Fabulous all her life,” and of his short-lived companionship with trail dog “Magic” had my eyes damp. And the dramatic day when touches the trail sign on Mount Katahdin is vividly painted.
Altogether a unique, wonderful book, and a joyful read.
Trail Memoir 