I just returned from doing a three-week section on the famed Appalachian Trail. The news is all good. The trail is well maintained and blazed, as well as teeming with hikers. According to ATC (Appalachian Trail Conservancy) figures, the number of thru-hikers for the Class of 2018 may reach 4,000–the most ever, and double the number of my Class of 20005. Interestingly, the number of foreigners has surged with Germans (always game travelers)...

Skywalker–Close Encounters on the Appalachian Trail is an, a narrative of 7-foot tall Bill Walker’s thru-hike attempt of the 2,178 mile Appalachian Trail. Like many popular hiking and camping books, it is, at turns, deadly serious and...

http://www.amazon.com/Skywalker-Close-Encounters-Appalachian-trail-ebook/product-reviews/B004Y6AGJ6/ref=cm_cr_dp_synop?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending#R10H97V4AJCCUVI recently reviewed the above review for my Appalachian Trail narrative, Skywalker–Close Encounters on the Appalachian Trail. The reviewer writes that “Long-distance hikers are always fascinating people.” Bingo–or almost so,...

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Outdoor adventure narratives are a cottage industry. And for good reason. A cursory look at history shows that the deepest yearning of humans is to move. “The great affair is to move,” wrote Pascal in his Pensees’s. “Complete calm is death.”Indeed, from our earliest time as a species, humans have sought to better their plight by perpetual motion, the Bedouins, Kurds, Aborigenes, to name but a few with this...

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-mn-robert-redford-walk-woods-richard-linklater-20130403,0,3308669.story “Robert Redford just bought the movie rights to Bryson’s book,” someone reported to me at Pine Grove Furnace State Park in 2005 during my thru-hike. This, incidentally, is the halfway point on the Appalachian Trail. Thru-hikers are renowned for attempting to eat a half-gallon of ice cream in an...