Trail Ways, Path Wise: An Appalachian Trail Through-Hike - Softcover

Illig, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1932762426 ISBN 13: 9781932762426

Publisher: Elderberry Press (OR), 2005

"The hardest thing about through-hiking the Appalachian Trail is getting to the start."  So begins Trail Ways, Path Wise.  Influenced by the prose of Bukowski and Hemingway (with a smattering of Kerouac, and adoration of Cormac McCarthy), Illig is a former journalist and natural storyteller who writes with a strong voice in a conversational, lyrical style: "Light on his feet, writes with tripping prose,"  says author John Hanson Mitchell.  He will have you flying down the trail, laughing as you go, eager to turn the next page to peek over the next mountaintop and around the bend.  Read TRAIL WAYS, PATH WISE alone, or as Book I in the 8,000-mile AT-PCT-CDT through-hiking trilogy that is:  Trail Ways, Path Wise (AT);  Pacific Dream (PCT);  and Man in the Middle (CDT).  Discover the nuances of America's three marquee hiking trails.  This trilogy is as much self-reflection and journey into maturity as it is a pondering of mountains.  

About the Author:

John Illig is the squash coach at Middlebury College in Vermont.  He lives riverside in the Green Mountains with his wife and their two dogs on 11 acres, with National Forest for a backyard.

Review:

"John Illig writes of his 2,100 mile adventure with humor, wisdom and love. His journey is both comic and mythic." -- review, by author J. Finney Boylan