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The Colorado Trail in Crisis
In The Colorado Trail in Crisis, retired naturalist and veteran thru-hiker Karl Ford brings both boots-on-the-ground experience and a scientist’s urgency to bear on one of the great environmental challenges of our time: climate change. Drawing from his re-hikes of the Colorado Trail in 2020 and 2021, Ford offers readers a thoughtful hybrid of trail
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A Walk in the Park
In A Walk in the Park, former whitewater river rat Kevin Fedarko traverses the Grand Canyon on foot in a journey of self-discovery. Fedarko, author of the award-winning The Emerald Mile, showcases his writing and wilderness talents with a mammoth work that feels like several books in one. Along with natural and human history, there
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Force of Nature: Three Women Tackle The John Muir Trail
Joan Griffin’s Force of Nature is a beautifully written trail memoir woven with rich storytelling and vivid descriptions. Griffin’s journey on the John Muir Trail (JMT) in 2006 might have taken seventeen years to translate into this book, but the result is an exquisitely crafted narrative that stands out as one of the best in
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What We Owe to Ourselves
Nicole Antoinette’s What We Owe to Ourselves is a captivating memoir of her thru-hike on the Colorado Trail—a journey she and I happened to undertake the same year. At one point, we were even within a few days of each other. Though we weren’t fated to cross paths, her book made me feel like I
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Master Class: The Vivid Nature of Annie Dillard
Published in 1974, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek chronicles Annie Dillard’s rambles near her home in rural Virginia. The book won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-fiction. And Edward Abbey labeled Dillard as Thoreau’s “true heir.” Pilgrim is a giant in the “humans encounter nature” genre. Structured in four sections, one for each season, there
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My Memoir – Two Sticks, One Path: A Journey Beyond Fear on the Colorado Trail
WELCOME, READERS! For access to complete maps and photos of the journey, please CLICK HERE. (The password is my preferred brand of forearm crutches, mentioned often in the book: eight letters, all lower case.) CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR NEWS RELATED TO THE BOOK. CLICK HERE TO BUY THE BOOK. CRITICAL PRAISE FOR THE
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The Wanting Was a Wilderness
When I first became interested in writing a trail-based memoir, I went looking for some sort of critical analysis of Wild, the iconic book in the genre. What I found was Alden Jones’ The Wanting Was a Wilderness: Cheryl Strayed’s Wild and the Art of Memoir. Jones’ book is a singular mixture of criticism, how-to,
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Girl in the Woods
Girl in the Woods: A Memoir by Aspen Matis is a coming-of-age account of a young woman battling her demons while thru-hiking the PCT. The story starts with Debby Parker who’s desperate to shed her overprotective past. Her mother has always controlled every aspect of her life, going as far as dressing and grooming her.
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Walking to the Gulf with John Muir: One of the First Trail Memoirs
John Muir (1838-1914) was the iconic American naturalist, scientist, environmental philosopher and advocate. A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf is one of his earliest writing efforts. Penned during a long journey on foot and only lightly edited, it is less polished than most of his other efforts, just a small literary step beyond notes
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Running for the Record on the Appalachian Trail: A Memoir About Rekindling the Flame
Scott Jurek is a runner who dominated the ultramarathon scene in the early 2000s. He won the Western States 100 Mile Endurance Run an astounding seven times in a row. In May of 2015, at age 41, in response to feelings of aimlessness and challenged by his wife, Jenny, Jurek sets off on his last
Trail Memoir 