Where the Waters Divide: A Walk Along America's Continental Divide

An account of the authors' walk across the Great Divide from Mexico to the Canadian border describes the people, the pertinent political and environmental issues, the history of the areas, and other important topics

Spurred by a sense of adventure, this husband-and-wife team from New York--Smith is a former academic, Berger, a former book editor--hiked from Mexico to Canada along the Continental Divide, the geological feature that splits America's watersheds roughly along the line of the Rocky Mountains. This account of their 182-day, 2580-mile walk, written in Berger's voice, offers much to fellow hikers wanting information on the extensive patchwork of trails. Otherwise evocative accounts of the generosity of strangers that hikers call "trail magic" and the authors' growing sympathy for the complexities of the battle between ranchers and environmentalists occasionally bog down in minute descriptions. Though the trip is billed as the first extended companionship for this couple, readers may wish the authors had shed more light on themselves.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Although the Continental Divide Trail is still more of a bureaucratic vision than a reality, newlyweds Berger (an editor) and Smith (a historian) decided to tackle it as it is--with this colorful but disappointing record of their experience as the result. Hiking a 3,200-mile course from Mexico to Canada in little more than five months--over deserts, through forests, and across countless mountain peaks--the trek involved equal measures of advance planning and on-the-spot resourcefulness. Even with the most current maps of the terrain, the authors found that trails and roads had vanished and watering holes had dried up, but by keeping their wits about them they managed to keep up a stiff pace, knowing that they were racing the onset of winter in the Montana high country even as they set out in the arid flatlands of southern New Mexico. With the steady support of friends old and new--as well as a fierce determination that carried them through snow squalls, thunderstorms, and into the heart of grizzly country to a remote crossing on the Canadian border--Berger and Smith witnessed both the glory and the shame of the American West today--magnificent mountain vistas, but also ample evidence of overgrazing and of the devastation caused by clear-cutting. Sharing the unflagging hospitality of ranchers and those dependent on the timber industry provided the authors insight into the deep-seated problems of the region, and these observations, along with occasional historical and geological vignettes, help to enrich an otherwise pedestrian narrative considerably. A solid if unexceptional chronicle of adventure and discovery in what remains of the American wilderness. (Eleven maps) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.