For many years Ken Weber has been educating visitors and natives alike about the historical and natural wonders of the Ocean State. The 40 walks and gentle hikes he has chosen for this completely updated third edition travel the best terrain the state has to offer, both urban and rural. Here you'll find: the 77-mile North South Trail, which spans the state from the Massachusetts border to the ocean; the cliffs of Block Island; the beaches of Ninigret and Napatree; the quiet woods and fields of the northwestern corner; the wildlife sanctuaries and islands of Narragansett Bay; and the mansions of Cliff Walk in Newport. The walks range from three to nine miles in length, from gentle strolls to more challenging day hikes. Each chapter includes directions to the trailhead, a detailed map, a complete description of the route, and natural and historic highlights you should see along the way.
This wooded and watery corner of New England has become, in the latter part of this century, a veritable paradise of recreational opportunities, offering boating, beaching, birding, and - unknown to many before Ken Weber's books came on the scene - wonderful walking. Through his columns in the "Providence Journal" and his books, including the recently published companion volume to this one, "More Walks and Rambles in Rhode Island," Ken has educated Rhode Islanders to the joys of this gentle sport. This second edition has been thoroughly updated by the author - almost half the walks have been substantially revised. Each of the 40 walks includes a map, hiking times and distances, an overview of the special features of the walk and its level of difficulty, directions on getting to the trailhead, and a two - to three-page description. There is also tremendous diversity to these 40 outings: one can choose from beach walks, woods walks, wetlands walks, and even island walks. Many of them, moreover, are suitable for families with children.
The great wide open is closer than you think. One of the benefits of being in such a small coastal State is that you can walk the cliffs of Newport in the morning and be in dense forest on the western forest after lunch. Just because you're in downtown Providence doesn't mean that you can't take a day hike anywhere in the State. Within an hour tops, you can be deep in the woods far from civilization, even though the closest main road will undoubtedly be only 3 miles away in either direction. Let Steve Mirsky take you to the best, often hidden, hiking routes right here in Rhode Island.
Hiking is a simple way for your family to have fun together while enhancing your health and well-being. Whether you are experienced hikers or totally new to the trails, this guide has everything you need to help you prepare for and enjoy exploring the great outdoors with children of all ages and abilities. The 42 family-friendly hikes include short, stroller-friendly walks as well as longer, more rugged excursions throughout Rhode Island. Each hike description includes essential and helpful information, a detailed map, and driving directions, as well as journal pages for your family to use to reflect upon and document your experiences. The Revised Rhode Island Family Hiking Guide and Journal will support and encourage your family to explore the Ocean State's beautiful, natural places and reap the many benefits that time in nature has on us all.
Hiking is a simple way for your family to have fun together while enhancing your health and well-being. Whether you are experienced hikers or totally new to the trails, this guide has everything you need to help you prepare for and enjoy exploring the great outdoors with children of all ages and abilities. The 42 family-friendly hikes include short, stroller-friendly walks as well as longer, more rugged excursions throughout Rhode Island. Each hike description includes essential and helpful information, a detailed map, and driving directions, as well as journal pages for your family to use to reflect upon and document your experiences. The Rhode Island Family Hiking Guide and Journal will support and encourage your family to explore the Ocean State's beautiful, natural places and reap the many benefits that time in nature has on us all.
A passionate, thought-provoking exploration of walking as a political and cultural activity, from the author of Orwell's Roses Drawing together many histories--of anatomical evolution and city design, of treadmills and labyrinths, of walking clubs and sexual mores--Rebecca Solnit creates a fascinating portrait of the range of possibilities presented by walking. Arguing that the history of walking includes walking for pleasure as well as for political, aesthetic, and social meaning, Solnit focuses on the walkers whose everyday and extreme acts have shaped our culture, from philosophers to poets to mountaineers. She profiles some of the most significant walkers in history and fiction--from Wordsworth to Gary Snyder, from Jane Austen's Elizabeth Bennet to Andre Breton's Nadja--finding a profound relationship between walking and thinking and walking and culture. Solnit argues for the necessity of preserving the time and space in which to walk in our ever more car-dependent and accelerated world.
“A rare historical insight into the tragic changes taking place in Palestine.” —Jimmy Carter From one of Palestine’s leading writers, a lyrical, elegiac account of one man’s wanderings through the landscape he loves—once pristine, now forever changed by settlements and walls—updated with a new afterword by the author. “I often come to walk in these hills,” I said to the man who was doing all the talking and seemed to be the commander. “In fact I was once here with my wife, it was 1999, and some of your soldiers shot at us.” “It was over on that side,” the soldier pointed out. “I was there,” he said, smiling. When Raja Shehadeh first started hill walking in Palestine, in the late 1970s, he was not aware that he was traveling through a vanishing landscape. In recent years, his hikes have become less than bucolic and sometimes downright dangerous. That is because his home is Ramallah, on the Palestinian West Bank, and the landscape he traverses is now the site of a tense standoff between his fellow Palestinians and settlers newly arrived from Israel. In this original and evocative book, we accompany Raja on six walks taken between 1978 and 2006. The earlier forays are peaceful affairs, allowing our guide to meditate at length on the character of his native land, a terrain of olive trees on terraced hillsides, luxuriant valleys carved by sacred springs, carpets of wild iris and hyacinth and ancient monasteries built more than a thousand years ago. Shehadeh's love for this magical place saturates his renderings of its history and topography. But latterly, as seemingly endless concrete is poured to build settlements and their surrounding walls, he finds the old trails are now impassable and the countryside he once traversed freely has become contested ground. He is harassed by Israeli border patrols, watches in terror as a young hiking companion picks up an unexploded missile and even, on one occasion when accompanied by his wife, comes under prolonged gunfire. Amid the many and varied tragedies of the Middle East, the loss of a simple pleasure such as the ability to roam the countryside at will may seem a minor matter. But in Palestinian Walks, Raja Shehadeh's elegy for his lost footpaths becomes a heartbreaking metaphor for the deprivations of an entire people estranged from their land.
