Updated and expanded because the final version in 2019, \u201cBooks for Hikers and Backpackers\u201d now consists of greater than 70 works separated into eight classes: 1. Educational; 2. Guidebooks; 3. Humour; 4. Inspirational; 5. Literature; 6. Memoirs; 7. Philosophy, and; 8. Ultralight. All of the books have a spot on both my conventional or cyber bookshelves, and the featured authors embody a number of the most skilled and educated hikers on the planet.<\/p>\n
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<\/a><\/p>\nOutdoorsy bookshelf at Casa Honan<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n 1.\u00a0 \u00a0Educational<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n 2.\u00a0 \u00a0Guidebooks<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Four of my Cicerone Guides from the 90s and 2000s.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n 3.\u00a0 \u00a0Humour<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n 4.\u00a0 \u00a0Inspirational\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI believe that I now understand in some small measure why the Buddhist goes on pilgrimage to a mountain. The journey is itself part of the technique by which the god is sought. It is a journey into Being; for as I penetrate more into the mountain\u2019s life, I penetrate also into my own. For an hour I am beyond desire. It is not ecstasy, that leap out of the self that makes man like a god. I am not out of myself, but in myself. I am. To know Being, this is the final grace accorded from the mountain.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Yours actually mountain climbing within the Cairngorms in September 2018.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n 5.\u00a0 \u00a0Literature<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWalking is the great adventure, the first meditation, a practice of heartiness and soul primary to humankind. Walking is the exact balance between spirit and humility.\u201d (The Practice of the Wild).<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cI want to see mountains again, Gandalf, mountains, and then find somewhere where I can rest. In peace and quiet, without a lot of relatives prying around, and a string of confounded visitors hanging on the bell.\u201d (Bilbo Baggins, \u201cThe Fellowship of the Ring\u201d)<\/em><\/p>\n The boys from the Fellowship of the Ring.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n 6.\u00a0 \u00a0Memoirs<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread. A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThere is a powerful human compulsion to leave things tied up in neat little bundles. But every journey except your last has an open end. And any journey of value is above all a chapter in a personal odyssey. Its end is not so much a goal attained as another point in a continuing process. And the important thing at the end of a journey \u2013 or of a book \u2013 is to keep moving forward, refreshed, with as little pause as possible.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Mike \u201cThe Gambler\u201d Towne on the Nankoweap Granaries in the course of the Hayduke Trail (March 2012). Fletcher slept in these cliff-hugging granaries throughout his 1963 journey via the Grand Canyon.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cAfter ten years of wandering and wondering in the heart of it, rejoicing in its glorious floods of light, the white beams of the morning streaming through the passes, the noonday radiance on the crystal rocks, the flush of the alpenglow, and the irised spray of countless waterfalls, it still seems above all others the Range of Light.\u201d (<\/span><\/i>The Yosemite)<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n John Muir in his beloved High Sierra.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n 7.\u00a0 \u00a0Philosophical<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe less you carry the more you will see, the less you spend the more you will experience<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf you judge safety to be the paramount consideration in life you should never, under any circumstances, go on long hikes alone. Don\u2019t take short hikes alone, either \u2013 or, for that matter, go anywhere alone. And avoid at all costs such foolhardy activities as driving, falling in love, or inhaling air that is almost certainly riddled with deadly germs\u2026\u2026\u2026And never, of course, explore the guts of an idea that seems as if it might threaten one of your more cherished beliefs. In your wisdom, you will probably live to be a ripe old age. But you may discover, just before you die, that you have been dead for a long, long time.\u201d (The Complete Walker 3).<\/em><\/p>\n For followers of Fletcher\u2019s work, I like to recommend choosing up a duplicate of \u201cWalking Man<\/a>\u201c, a wonderful biography by Robert Wehrman.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
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\u201cI grow into these mountains like a moss. I am bewitched. The blinding snow peaks and the clarion air, the sound of earth and heaven in the silence, the requiem birds, the mythic beasts, the flags, great horns, and old carved stones\u2026\u2026\u2026.Also, I love the common miracles-the murmur of my friends at evening, the clay fires of smudgy juniper, the coarse dull food, the hardship and simplicity, the contentment of doing one thing at a time.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n
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