I want summer weather. I want sweat on my brow and aches in my legs. July backpacking is on my list of goals this year: spending five days hiking for miles on an island with no wifi. I wish to filter away the brain-eating amoebas and drink a river with a straw. To sleep under the stars where mosquitoes hunt you and bears try to steal your pic-a-nic baskets.
Romanticizing the wilderness is keeping me warm this month. While training for these hilly hikes, I’ve got my phone playing the Libby audiobook for Kevin Fedarko’s A Walk in the Park: True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon.
This book captures the milestones and mishaps of the author’s attempt at hiking the length of the Grand Canyon. His writing is some of the best travel journalism I’ve read in years. Full of humor, hubris and humiliation, I find myself compelled to keep listening — and walking — until I’m forced to move on to something else.
It’s not just detailed desert descriptions that makes this great writing. It’s the tales of the Canyon’s heroes, the legends who challenged themselves to the unthinkable. It’s the quirky characters that teach him about flora and fauna. The best book-length nonfiction entertains while teaching. Fedarko is a master storyteller and does just that.
Another hiking hit is Michael Finkel’s The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit. Published in 2017, the book tells the story of Christopher Knight, a Maine man who spent 27 years living near the state’s North Pond vacation homes. Knight survived by committing about 1,000 burglaries, taking only practical items and candy.
If hiking the length of the Grand Canyon is hardcore, living outside through 27 Maine winters is just as ballsy. The guy didn’t even light campfires for fear of the smoke leading to his discovery.
My hike will be nothing so brazen, but I love reading these stories that boast of the human body’s strengths. We don’t know what we’re capable of until we train and try. We are built to defy death.
The book that first prodded me down this hiking path was Katherine Center’s Happiness for Beginners. The title comes from a psychology textbook owned by one of the college student characters. (Remember all the news about pop psychology courses on happiness?) The protagonist decides to trek through the Wyoming wilderness to find her new beginning. This rom com features a cast of likable characters with little in common but their desire to conquer the hike. I felt like I was a fellow traveler along for the adventure. Minus the mosquitoes.
These are just a few of the outdoorsy books that will warm my soul this winter. Want more book ideas? Contact us through icpl.org/ask.
Melody Dworak is a librarian at the Iowa City Public Library, juggling two to three books at any given time. Having a love for all things reading and writing, she served on Little Village’s editorial team from 2005-10. This article was originally published in Little Village’s February 2025 issue.
