On the Beaten Path: An Appalachian Pilgrimage [Paperback]

A beautiful story.Esquire A book for the rest of us, who will never climb Annapurna but still need to do something to test our own physical and mental limits.National Geographic Adventure Delightful. . . . [Rubin] writes humorously and honestly.Seattle Times Engaging and enjoyable.Library Journal Rubin opens his heart to hikers, people in the nearby towns and the reader, inviting everyone along to share both hardship and discovery. ... [He] tells a human tale of the search for meaning and the understandable need to reduce a complicated life to a simple passage from white blaze to white blaze, from town to town.News & Observer, Raleigh, North CarolinaAn eloquent, wise, and witty account of how one man's six-month, end-to-end hike of the Appalachian Trail led him back home.An eloquent, wise, and witty account of how one man's six-month, end-to-end hike of the Appalachian Trail led him back home.Back in Paperback, with a new afterword by the author Of the thru-hikers who set out to walk the entire Appalachian Trail, most dont make it. Robert Rubins chances didnt look good. Thirty-eight years old, dispirited, and burned out by a job he no longer loved, he decided to leave mortgage and wife and cul-de-sac life behind for a journey that could take half a yearor perhaps never end. On the trails wooded ridges, Rubin found himself part of a strange vagrant culture of pilgrims and dropouts, a world with its own rules and rituals. With eloquence and humor, he recounts his trekthe people he met, the landscapes he passed through, the spiritual and physical endurance involved (despite a diet heavy in Snickers bars and macaroni & cheese, he lost seventy-five pounds along the way). On the Beaten Path is a wise, witty look at one of the few remaining pilgrimages in our disillusioned age.Robert Alden Rubin is a wirter and editor who lives with his wife, Catherine, in Sykesville, Maryland.Of the thruhikers who set out to walk the entire Appalachian Tralc"