Great read. Then again, I'm a sucker for these types of books.

I looked forward to reading this book, and for the most part, enjoyed it. The author did a lot of research and I liked reading about the history and geography of the AT...for a while. However, the book started to get a little slow and I started skimming. The biggest disappointment, though, was that throughout the book the author talked about giving up everything and hiking the trail, searching for something in his life. But (spoiler alert), by the end of the book, I still didn't know what he was searching for and whether he found it. After all he put himself and his wife through, he could've at least told me what happened after he went off trail. Disappointing!!!

Did not enjoy it as much as some of the other AT books I have read over the years.

Read from 11/30 - 12/3.

Very informative book about the authors time on the AT. One minute you want to do it so bad you can taste it, the next chapter you are saying no way.... Then at the end who he gets to the Mount, you want to head out ASAP. One minute it sounds like a dream come true, the next you think it might be the trip to hell.

It's time to start something new, follow a new path, rediscover nature!

Guy hikes Appalachian Trail book. Except the only person I felt anything for was his wife, who stayed home. I was surprised by the stand off-ish tone of the whole book even with the undercurrent of it being a type of pilgrimage. Everything felt glossed over; maybe it was his editing background that came thru too much but it was missing the depth of characters you usually root for in a great AT book.

Another book about someone making the trek from Georgia to Maine on the Appalachian Trail. This was the best out of the three I've read so far. Rubin chronicles his journey like a diary and doesn't include a lot of boring statistics like the others. He is more personal and includes more descriptions about his own journey and not the trail in general. He starts each chapter by telling what day of the hike it is, the date, his location, how many miles he's walked and how many he has left, the weather and the elevation. It gets exciting as it nears the end and I anticipated his ascent to Mount Kathadin. He completes his journey and the reader gets the feeling that he has accomplished something really great. He definitely made some memories that will last a lifetime. He returns to Damascus for trail days and meets up with some of the thru hikers from '97. He knows that that particular adventure is over now and it's time to move on to something new. I found I could relate to much of the author's feelings, including the sentiments found in the following quotes:

"Then as I moved out of my twenties and into my thirties, six months became almost no time at all. Lately, a work week would blink by almost before I woke up - five days of struggling out of bed in the morning, sorting through bad manuscripts, churning out copy, making excuses, racing deadlines, asking favors, sucking up. The weekend would slip by too, and no book or movie or Internet chat session could slow it down."

"I don't hear voices, but during the past twenty years, when I wasn't engrossed in a project that required focus, sometimes a mental videotape would switch on and start playing over and over moments of my life from when I was a boy to the present day that haunt me: a conversation gone wrong, a missed opportunity, a moment of self-delusion, a cowardly act, a trust betrayed, a mistake made, a promise unfulfilled. These are my demons. Over the past few years they'd multiplied until I could no longer simply will myself to turn the machine off and get on with the business at hand. More and more I found myself raging at the obligations, the failures, the fact that I couldn't stop repeating myself, couldn't leave the demons behind. It began poisoning the accomplishments I took pride in, the beauty I saw, the friendships I valued, the people I loved. That's one of the ways depression works, coming upon you gradually, like the night. Myself am hell, Satan says in Paradise Lost. He's right: hell is not a place. It's a darkness you carry with you, a darkness that burns. But for all that, mornings come, and with them, hope."

"Few visitors to Disneyland expect their lives to be changed by what they find there, and at the end of the week, after they've been beguiled, they climb back into their cars and drive home. I'ts about all most of us have come to expect in the age of information and entertainment: a brief diversion."

"We came out here in the woods looking for something. We've found Katahdin: real, granite solid, solitary, and beautiful - so beautiful it can break your heart. No hype has manufactured it, no spin doctoring applied, no marketing necessary."

"Surely in the wild - even in this remnant - we have left ourselves as the old century winds down - surely here we can reinvent ourselves somehow, found anew, start afresh, begin again."

Fun, lyrical account of a guy who decides to quit his job as an editor and hike the AT. I found myself drawn to his beautiful descriptions of some sections of the AT that I have hiked and longing to hike some sections I have not. It does not have me wanting to thru-hike! It is interesting that after his thru-hike he was led to become an editor for the Appalachian Trail Conference for 5 years where he could directly impact and improve their maps and guidebooks!

Good story about one man's experience thruhiking the Appalachian Trail. Good mix of trail descriptions, history, and relationships formed and unformed.

I'm now a bit more nervous about section-hiking the AT. So much about mice! Eeek!
Disappointed that he didn't honestly thruhike the entire thing.

Bla bla bla

No wonder this guy quit his job as an editor. This book was boring. A forced attempt at humor and self analytical babble. It moved indiscriminately between the people on the trail, nature, psycho babble and trail history in an in organized and rambling manner that I did not enjoy. No wonder this guy quit his job as an editor. If this book is a reflection of his skills he should stick to hiking.