This story of two friends hiking over 1,300 miles is "a worthy successor to Bill Bryson's classic book . . . A Walk in the Woods" ( The VVA Veteran).Avalanche and Gorilla Jim is a true picture of what it's like to hike over 1,300 miles of fun-filled, gut-wrenching, awe inspiring trail, filled with the humor of two guys on a long trek over grueling terrain. It allows the reader to actually live and feel Appalachian Trail life and its excit...

Girl in the Woods is Aspen Matis's exhilarating true-life adventure of hiking from Mexico to Canada—a coming of age story, a survival story, and a triumphant story of overcoming emotional devastation. On her second night of college, Aspen was raped by a fellow student. Overprotected by her parents who discouraged her from telling of the attack, Aspen was confused and ashamed. Dealing with a problem that has sadly become all too common on college campuses around the country, she stumbled th...

Finding Jim describes Susan Oakey-Baker’s struggle to confront the realities of life after the death of her husband, renowned mountain guide Jim Haberl, the first Canadian to summit the most difficult mountain in the world: K2. For fifteen years they had spent time adventuring together around the world: skiing the Himalaya, rafting in Nepal and mountaineering in North America. In time, they got married, solidified a home for themselves in Whistler, British Columbia, and planned on...

Part adventure story, part love story, part homecoming, Still Points North is a page-turning memoir that explores the extremes of belonging and exile, and the difference between how to survive and knowing how to truly live.Growing up in the wilds of Alaska, seven-year-old Leigh Newman spent her time landing silver salmon, hiking glaciers, and flying in a single-prop plane. But her life split in two when her parents unexpectedly divorced, requiring her to spend summers on t...

The remarkable story of one woman's journey from grief to faith to happiness—as she holds her family together in the wake of her husband's death, pursues his dream of becoming a minister, and ultimately finds her calling as a chaplain to search-and-rescue workers.Ten years ago, Kate Braestrup and her husband Drew were enjoying the life they shared together. They had four young children, and Drew, a Maine state trooper, would soon begin training to become a minister...

Read the stories of several amazing characters as they pass through a mountain store and hostel on the Appalachian Trail.Before he was an award-winning author, Winton Porter found success in the outdoor retail business. His family enjoyed living wherever his work took him: Atlanta, Chicago, Salt Lake City. But like so many others, he often stared out the window, wanting something different. Eventually, he cashed in his 401k and ransacked his bank account to become ...

In this otherworldly memoir of extraordinary power, Mark Richard, an award-winning author, tells his story of growing up in the American South with a heady Gothic mix of racial tension and religious fervor.Called a “special child,” Southern social code for mentally—and physically—challenged children, Richard was crippled by deformed hips and was told he would spend his adult life in a wheelchair. During his early years in charity hospitals, Richard observed the dra...

“A frank, poignant memoir about an unlikely marriage, a tragic death in Iraq, and the soul-testing work of picking up the pieces” (People) in the tradition of such powerful bestsellers as Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking and Carole Radziwill’s What Remains.Artis Henderson was a free-spirited young woman with dreams of traveling the world and one day becoming a writer. Marrying a conservative Texan soldier and becoming an Army wi...

What John McPhee's books all have in common is that they are about real people in real places. Here, at his adventurous best, he is out and about with people who work in freight transportation.Over the past eight years, John McPhee has spent considerable time in the company of people who work in freight transportation. Uncommon Carriers is his sketchbook of them and of his journeys with them. He rides from Atlanta to Tacoma alongside Don Ainsworth, owner a...

"A nature book unlike any other…peppered with gritty, anti-romantic, all-too-real tales of cops 'n' bad guys in the great outdoors."— The San Diego Union-TribuneJordan Fisher Smith's startling account of fourteen years as a park ranger thoroughly dispels our idealized visions of life in the great outdoors. Instead of scout troops and placid birdwatchers, Smith's beat—a stretch of land that has been officially condemned to be flooded—brings him into contact ...

A hilarious collection of essays dedicated to life in the great outdoors from Field & Stream's acclaimed Sportsman's Life columnist.For nearly a decade, Bill Heavey, an outdoorsman marooned in suburbia, has written the Sportsman's Life column on the back page of Field & Stream, where he does for hunting and fishing what David Feherty does for golf and Lewis Grizzard did for the South. If You Didn't Bring Jerky, What Did I Just Eat? is the...

M. J. Eberhart, aka the Nimblewill Nomad, was a 60-year-old retired doctor in January 1998 when he set off on a foot journey that carried him 4,400 miles (twice the length of the Appalachian Trail) from the Florida Keys to the far north of Quebec. Written in a vivid journal style, the author unabashedly recounts the good (friendships with other hikers he met), the bad (sore legs, cutting winds and rain), and the godawful (those dispiriting doubts) aspects of his days of walking along what ...