Time to put your hiking boots on

Walking has a long and storied history in books. One like Walking by Thoreau helped create the genre. More recently Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, a book about the Pacific Crest Trail, shaped a whole subgenre of travel memoir. Our book of the month, Craig Mod’s Things Become Other Things, is just the latest spin on the topic—and I thought I’d recommend a few other walking books that have stood out to me over the years.

Oh, on the subject of journeys, I am writing to you from a forest lookout in New Zealand, where I’m visiting family and plan to enjoy a few hikes over the next week. This is already a very enjoyable trip, but it does mean that for logistical reasons—both mine and Craig’s—we won’t be doing a live chat this month. I’ll be sharing the chat we had next weekend.

On to some book recommendations.

Lone Wolf: Walking the Line Between Civilization and Wilderness, Adam Weymouth

Released last summer, this book follows the trail of a remarkable wolf known as Slavc, who split from his pack in Slovenia 15 years ago and walked more than a thousand miles across the Alps—and ended up helping repopulate his species in Italy and beyond. Weymouth puts on his hiking shoes and traces Slavc’s steps with care and love, and tells terrific stories about all the people he meets along the way. I actually nearly picked this one for the club, but sadly there were some supply issues with the American edition. Recommended.

The Pilgrimage, Paul Coelho

There’s a lot written about taking the Camino de Santiago across Spain, one of the most famous pilgrimages in the world. When I asked my wife what books made her think about walking, she immediately thought of this early Coelho novel—an extraordinary, semi-autobiographical adventure of a guru leading his disciple along the camino. 

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, JRR Tolkien

And since I’m in New Zealand it seems only sensible to pick a book which not shaped a great deal of modern pop culture and is basically just about a bunch of guys constantly walking, but also inspired one of my son’s favorite songs, Tom Cardy’s “Walk”. Warning: Tom Cardy is both very silly and Australian, so this song (and the video, I suppose) is very NSFW.

Any suggestions you have for great books about walking? Just hit reply to let me know, and I’ll share with the list.

Onwards,

Bobbie