Reviews for Walking with Spring

The average rating for Walking with Spring based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-07-04 00:00:00 Patrick Hiney I can thank the deepest recession since the Great Depression for the discovery of this treasure. While getting ready for work one morning, I enjoyed an NPR news story profiling the newly-unemployed. It seems a few, those with a bit of time on their hands and money to spare (5 grand or so), decided what better opportunity could there be than to hike the Appalachian Trail. It seems that spiritual quests don't come cheap these days -- you've got to be jobless, yet also have some cash to spare. A rare confluence to be sure, these days, for most of us Not that everyone who hikes part (or all) of the 2,175 mile trail is looking for spiritual enlightenment. But I would venture that most of them seek connection with something bigger than themselves -- perhaps not God, not literally, not necessarily -- perhaps connection instead with the mountain they're scaling, the stream they're fording, the thunderstorm they're enduring, the tree they're climbing -- after being chased by a moose, bear, or pesky raccoon. Not too long ago, I read Into the Wild, as well as other, more scholarly texts. Texts that talked a bit about philosophy, spirituality, compassion. I learned about Buddhism, the Dalai Lama, Eating Praying and Loving, Zen meditation, ashrams and monastic retreat. I learned about The Tao, Eckhart Tolle; I even soaked up the Zen is Stupid podcast. Check it out on iTunes if you get the chance, if you have the inclination. From these resources, I learned that even though the Earth's surface has been satellite-photographed inch by inch, virtualized on Google Earth and that at a click of a button even the underprivileged on the other side of the world can view the the street on which I live, the home I've bought, there are still great, virtually infinite swaths of the human experience -- our internal experience, our inner lives -- ripe to be explored. How ironic it is, then, that for many, the road to connection with our own hearts, our own souls, our own spirituality, lies through external exploration, physical hardship, prolonged communion with Mother Earth. Sometimes I find myself thinking all this civilization's a sham, as Shaffer points out a ways into his memoir. There certainly is a simplicity, a soul-stirring truth to the kind of solitude to be found walking alone on a hiking trail, contemplating eternity at the edge of a lonesome lake, or peering from a high hill at the surrounding miles. And I can't help but feel the seduction. It pulls at me like a sixth sense. Sometimes I feel quite ghostly, that I might not actually feel or become alive until I have the opportunity to share in Shaffer's profound achievement. Of course, I understand that my journey will never be like his. It would be different, my own singular, individual landscape, my own path through the woods. My footprints will become my fingerprint. No one will ever trod the trail just as I have, seen and experienced exactly the same things. Oh, how I wish for such an experience. I long to feel so much more than I feel right now. To own a cabin on a remote hilltop, commune with nature and write about my experience, my solitude. I guess I'm a bit of a dreamer. I wish I knew more people like me. At any rate, switching gears, Shaffer's book isn't great literature. It can be tedious at times, even for me -- so I recommend the book not for those who entertain only a passing fancy, but for those harboring, honing the focused mindfulness of the impassioned wanderer. Shaffer's attention to detail, his devoted journal-keeping, have allowed for this marvelous record of adventure to be compiled and published. But it's almost too detailed -- particularly since so much of the trail has changed since his first thru-hike. His intrepid traversing, the endless creeks, lakes, ridges and towns become repetitive and begin to blur. It's unfortunate, really. I found myself reading for the anecdotes about animals, millions of munching inchworms, crazy loons and bald eagles, backwoods strangers and dangerously clueless hikers, the transcendent beauty. Not for the geographic logistics of the actual hiking, on which so much of the text dwelt. Too linear, too repetitve. But even so, I enjoyed it immensely. How could I not? I hope you do, too.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-01-14 00:00:00 Christopher Mendoza I'm an old guy - Social Security retirement age. Yet Earl Shaffer accomplished what he called his 'Long Cruise' - the very first Appalachian Trail thru-hike - before I was born (but barely - I happened to be a fetus at the time). The year was 1948. When you're the very first to do something there's a wall of uncertainty surrounding the endeavor that is hard to comprehend. The conventional wisdom among those involved with and knowledgeable about the Appalachian Trail at that time was that what Earl did was impossible. In fact many people refused to believe he had done it until he convinced them via personal interviews, during which he was grilled for trail details that only a hiker would know, and via testimonials of many 'witnesses' he had met along the way. Earl and a friend had been making plans to hike the entire AT as far back as the 1930's, soon after the whole thing was finished. They lived not far from the trail in York, PA and they had gone on many backpacking trips along the trail near home. But then World War II came along. Earl found himself in combat in the South Pacific, and when he got back home he found the experiences hard to shake off. Worse, his friend did not return. In the past few years there has been a burgeoning Veteran support group known as "Warrior Hike" that advocates that returning veterans 'Hike off the War' by doing an AT thru-hike. The participants find it very therapeutic--a good way to ease back into civilian life. Earl Shaffer was undoubtedly the first Warrior Hiker. It seems to me that he quietly dedicated his hike to his friend, and I believe this helped steel his resolve to finish, despite having to find his way through sections that had been neglected and unmaintained through the war, others that had been clear cut by loggers, and still others that had been rerouted without adequate marking. There was the 'Missing Link' between the Green Mountains of VT and New Hampshire's White Mountains where the trail barely existed at all. Some of the early trail's shortcomings probably motivated Earl to want to help make the experience for other hikers better. After his hike, Earl went on to have a long distinguished career of service for the Trail. He knew most of the true legends, including Myron Avery and Benton MacKaye, to whom he dedicated his book. And it's a testimony to him that the publisher who opted to sign him was none other than the Apppalachian Trail Conference itself (now called the Appalachian Trail Conservancy). Earl didn't write his book right away. It was first published privately in 1981, then picked up by ATC and made public in 1983. But during the 'Lone Expedition' as he also called it, he maintained a diary, and words from his 'Little Black Notebook' make frequent appearances in the final text. Earl's writing style is down-to-earth, almost quaint in its old-fashioned simplicity, yet it rises to a standard of elegance and sophistication that many more recent trail memoirs are not able to match. Earl is a keen observer with a love for the history of the land, and he's a marvelous pastoral poet. The book is filled with well written verse and with descriptions of the country through which he was traveling. He describes elements of the human history of the land that I had not heard before despite my extensive reading about the trail. He covers the history of the inhabitants from pre-Columbian days, through early settlement, the civil war, to the then modern but now historic encounters with an amiable mountain man tilling his field with two mules and a walk-behind plow, a ride in a Model-A driven by a non-English-speaking Pennsylvania Dutch farmer, and Park Rangers who personally kept tabs on his progress and radioed the news north to their colleagues. His hike was a historic event, yet Earl's humble telling makes it feel personal and real. I especially delighted in his descriptions of places that I personally passed on my thru-hike in 2012--still there, still on the trail route after sixty four years. As AT hiking memoirs go, this is one of the good ones--a must read.