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The Trail Provides
David Smart is a 24-year old millennial stuck in an uninspiring digital marketing job after college. Finding the corporate lifestyle devoid of purpose, he ditches the position and searches for an alternative. Frat brother Bradley has a plan: Hike the Pacific Crest Trail. Feeling he’d never stuck with projects in his youth, Smart signs on
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Sticks and Stones: How to Hike the Appalachian Trail in Thirteen Years
There are many tales of the Appalachian Trail out there, but none quite as down-to-earth as Sticks and Stones: How to Hike the Appalachian Trail in Thirteen Years. Diana “Sticks” Harsha represents the casual hiker in that she’s not looking to set records or overcome gargantuan obstacles. She’s not superhuman—she simply likes to hike. Harsha
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The Art of Memoir
Mary Karr is the bestselling author of the 1995 memoir The Liar’s Club. She’s also published five volumes of poetry and is a professor of English Literature at Syracuse University, where her students have included Cheryl Strayed. With those credentials you might expect a highfalutin literary voice in her book on memoir, but far from
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Becoming Odyssa
Jennifer Pharr Davis has a long outdoor resume including thru hikes on virtually every continent, the Women’s Fastest Known Time on the Appalachian Trail in 2008, then the Overall FKT on the AT in 2011. Becoming Odyssa is the story of her first adventure, hiking the AT in 2005, and how she became who she
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Mud, Rocks, Blazes: Letting Go on the Appalachian Trail
Heather “Anish” Anderson set the record for the Fastest Known Time (FKT) self-supported on the Pacific Crest Trail, which she documented in her first memoir Thirst: 2600 Miles to Home. Her sequel, Mud, Rocks, Blazes: Letting Go on the Appalachian Trail, starts off with feelings of dissatisfaction and restlessness. Her self-doubt is evident, questioning if
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An Ensemble Trail Story
Barney Scout Mann is considered an elder statesman of the trail community. He’s been backpacking most of his life, is a triple-crowner, and has contributed to our iconic national trails through leadership positions at the Pacific Crest Trail Association, the Continental Divide Trail Coalition, and the Partnership for the National Trails System. His Journeys North:
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Author Profile: Colin Fletcher
Colin Fletcher was my first outdoor hero and perhaps also my first literary one. As I prepared for my long-distance backpacking trip at Philmont Scout Ranch, age 14, a scouting buddy confided that I must study The Complete Walker. It was the backpacking bible of the early 1970s. I was immediately taken by the cover
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A Short Course in Storytelling
My background is in technical writing with years of documenting software during my career, then blogging about personal finance during retirement. When I set out to write my memoir, I knew I could construct sentences efficiently, recount events precisely, and describe scenery accurately. But, after receiving my first critiques from experienced memoirists and novelists, I
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A Bestselling Old-School Trail Memoir
AWOL on the Appalachian Trail. If Amazon reviews are an indication, David Miller’s AWOL on the Appalachian Trail may be the third-best selling trail memoir of all time, behind only Wild and A Walk in the Woods. Published in 2010 about a 2003 hike, Miller had a jump on many writing trail memoirs. And his
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A Meta Trail Memoir
On Trails. Robert Moor is an eloquent essayist who thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail in 2009, a rainy year. With the mountain vistas obscured by mist, Moor began pondering the connections under his feet. Eventually he traveled the world to learn about all kinds of trails and produced a New York Times bestseller and winner of
Books, Authors, Trails
Trail Memoir 