Tag travel

The Trail Provides: My Favorite Book

Reg Spittle 1 Comment

As 2020 is ushered out the door, author David Smart wins my applause for writing the best book out of the 50 or so I read this year.

As a distance trekker, I am in awe that he walked more than 2,600 miles on the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mexican border to Canada. He earns his trail name, Stayin’ Alive, many times over. As a fellow writer, I admire his honesty and entertaining narrative. He earns my hope that this is not his last book (nor distance trek).

If circumstances again keep me from a distance trail in 2021, I will pick up The Trail Provides: A Boy’s Memoir of Thru-Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, for an adventure that will not feel as vicarious as it is.

Check out my review here.

Two Treks, Two Writers, Two Stories

Reg Spittle Leave a comment
My Journey around Mont Blanc PAPERBACK 2019 by Dan Karmi

Michael Tyler and his wife walked more than 40 times as far as Dan Karmi, but distance is not necessarily the defining measure of their accomplishments.

In Walking Thru, Tyler recreates his journey of more than 2,000 miles on the Pacific Crest Trail. I am pulled to the PCT because of its incredible challenges in the desert of Southern California, over peaks more than 13,000 feet high in the Sierra Nevada, and through two more states, Oregon and Washington. Sue and I have walked five European distance treks, but none compare to the length and difficulty of the PCT.

Karmi, from Israel, walked 60 miles of the 110-mile Tour du Mont Blanc, but I have to give him credit for attempting something unlike anything he had ever done. Sue and I had done two other treks by the time we walked around Mont Blanc, something we could not have done without experience. Karmi’s story, My Journey Around Mont Blanc, is an honest sharing of his unusual experience.

Neither book was a gripping account, but I was drawn to their stories. Their adventures were so unalike, but distance walkers will find value in their words.