Appalachian Trail Happiness is both a collection of stories and recollections of Michael "Rev" Kane's 1000 mile hike on the 2200 mile Appalachian Trail and also an example of how to live a happier life through action. The founder and author of the blog The Ministry of Happiness (https: //revkane.com), the book both brings you along on his hike while also addressing what makes us happy and inspiring people to find their own adventures. Through three daily questions: What was the most beautiful thing I experienced today; What made me happy today; and What did I learn today, the book explores the positive side of long distance hiking and makes insights to the benefit of adventure in making us happier in life.
Domestic goddess Emily Leonard leaves the comforts of her home to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail. Having never spent the night in the woods alone, she is in for a life-changing journey. Spending the last 25 years taking care of the house and kids while her husband, Bruce, took care of the finances, she was ready to do something for herself. The six-month journey and 2,189.2 miles of wilderness would give her more than she expected. Life lessons, faith encounters, highs and lows, and even romance were just some of the gifts the trail gave her. Be ready to laugh and cry from Georgia to Maine as you hike with Emily on her trek through fourteen states, more than five million steps through the woods, across rivers, and over mountains.
Recollections of grueling climbs, knee-wrecking descents, mountaintop thunderstorms, snakes underfoot, and the myriad characters encountered on an AT thru-hike.
A man of few words, Ranger Jay Daniels values the calm, quiet solitude of the Great Smoky Mountains. Never quite fitting in with either side of his family, he prefers the company of birds and trees to people. Yeah, he’d most definitely prefer a bird—any bird, any bird at all, take a vulture for instance—to the human-tornado hybrid that just blew onto his peaceful stretch of the Appalachian Trail. The path of true love never has run smooth for Olive Perry. After getting dumped and promptly abandoned in the middle of her multi-month hike, Olive swears off men. Determined to finish the long trek by herself, she doesn’t need a prince—or broody and taciturn ranger—to save her. Yet, when an early snowstorm threatens the mountains, and Ranger Daniels is charged with getting hikers to safety, that includes hot-tempered Olive Perry. Snowed in and forced to share an abandoned cabin, can Olive’s heated intensity melt Jay’s cool reserve? And if so, will this happy trail lead to true love? Or will their time together be just another bump in the road? 'Happy Trail' is a full-length contemporary romantic comedy, can be read as a standalone, and is book#1 in the Park Ranger series, Green Valley World, Penny Reid Book Universe.
As seen on Netflix - from the New York Times bestselling author of The Bodyguard and Hello Stranger Helen Carpenter can’t quite seem to bounce back. Newly divorced at thirty-two, her life has fallen apart beyond her ability to put it together again. So when her annoying younger brother, Duncan, convinces her to sign up for a hardcore wilderness survival course in the backwoods of Wyoming—she hopes it’ll be exactly what she needs. Instead, it’s a disaster. It’s nothing like she wants, or expects, or anticipates. She doesn’t anticipate the surprise summer blizzard, for example—or the blisters, or the rutting elk, or the mean pack of sorority girls. And she especiallydoesn’t anticipate that her annoying brother’s even-more-annoying best friend, Jake, will show up for the exact same course—and distract her, derail her, and . . . kiss her. But it turns out sometimes disaster can teach you exactly the things you need to learn. Like how to keep going, even when you think you can’t. How being scared can make you brave. And how sometimes getting really, really lost is your only hope of getting found. Happiness for Beginners is Katherine Center at her most heart-warming, captivating best—a nourishing, page-turning, up-all-night read about how to get back up. It’s a story that looks at how our struggles lead us to our strengths. How love is always worth it. And how the more good things we look for, the more we find.
Derick Lugo had never been hiking. He didn't even know if he liked being outside all that much. He certainly couldn't imagine going more than a day without manicuring his goatee. But with a job overseas cut short and no immediate plans, this fixture of the greater New York comedy circuit began to think about what he might do with months of free time and no commitments. He had heard of the Appalachian Trail and knew of its potential for danger and adventure, but he had never seriously considered attempting to hike all 2,192 miles of it. Then again, what could go wrong for a young black man from the city trekking solo through the East Coast backwoods? The Unlikely Thru-Hiker is the story of how an unknowing ambassador of one of the AT's least common demographics, unfamiliar with both the outdoors and thru-hiking culture, sets off with an extremely overweight pack and a willfully can-do attitude to conquer the infamous trail. What follows are eye-opening lessons on preparation, humility, race relations, and nature's wild unpredictability. But this isn't a hard-nosed memoir of discouragement or intolerance. What sets Lugo apart from the typical walk in the woods is his refusal to let any challenge squash his inner Pollyanna. Through it all, he perseveres with humor, tenacity, and an unshakeable commitment to grooming--earning him the trail name "Mr. Fabulous"--that sees him from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Katahdin in Maine.
God only knows what possessed Bill Bryson, a reluctant adventurer if ever there was one, to undertake a gruelling hike along the world's longest continuous footpath—The Appalachian Trail. The 2,000-plus-mile trail winds through 14 states, stretching along the east coast of the United States, from Georgia to Maine. It snakes through some of the wildest and most spectacular landscapes in North America, as well as through some of its most poverty-stricken and primitive backwoods areas. With his offbeat sensibility, his eye for the absurd, and his laugh-out-loud sense of humour, Bryson recounts his confrontations with nature at its most uncompromising over his five-month journey. An instant classic, riotously funny, A Walk in the Woods will add a whole new audience to the legions of Bill Bryson fans.
A 41-year-old engineer quits his job to hike the Appalachian Trail. This is a true account of his hike from Georgia to Maine, bringing to the reader the life of the towns and the people he meets along the way.
From the author of the bestseller Eat and Run, a thrilling memoir about his grueling, exhilarating, and immensely inspiring 46-day run to break the speed record for the Appalachian Trail. Scott Jurek is one of the world's best known and most beloved ultrarunners. Renowned for his remarkable endurance and speed, accomplished on a vegan diet, he's finished first in nearly all of ultrarunning's elite events over the course of his career. But after two decades of racing, training, speaking, and touring, Jurek felt an urgent need to discover something new about himself. He embarked on a wholly unique challenge, one that would force him to grow as a person and as an athlete: breaking the speed record for the Appalachian Trail. North is the story of the 2,189-mile journey that nearly shattered him. When he set out in the spring of 2015, Jurek anticipated punishing terrain, forbidding weather, and inevitable injuries. He would have to run nearly 50 miles a day, every day, for almost seven weeks. He knew he would be pushing himself to the limit, that comfort and rest would be in short supply -- but he couldn't have imagined the physical and emotional toll the trip would exact, nor the rewards it would offer. With his wife, Jenny, friends, and the kindness of strangers supporting him, Jurek ran, hiked, and stumbled his way north, one white blaze at a time. A stunning narrative of perseverance and personal transformation, North is a portrait of a man stripped bare on the most demanding and transcendent effort of his life. It will inspire runners and non-runners alike to keep striving for their personal best.
