Hiking adventures abound in Caledon, and as the weather gets better and better, you’re going to want to get out and enjoy them! Lucky for you, we’re hosting an event on March 31 to help you plan your next big adventure close to home. Preparing to Walk the Bruce Trail is a program hosted on Zoom by members of the Caledon Hills Bruce Trail Club. They’ll share their best tips about hiking, including planning your hikes, how to hike, and where to hike. Registration is now open for the program, but between now and then, grab one of these books chock full of hiking inspiration!
A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail, Bill Bryon
“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.”
Lines on a Map: Unparalleled Adventures in Modern Exploration, Frank Wolf
“Lines on a Map is a compilation of Frank Wolf’s best work from the past two decades. Some of the adventures include: two friends on a cycling and volcano-climbing odyssey across Java, the world’s most populous island, in the world’s most populous Muslim country, Indonesia, in the wake of 9/11; a surreal private lunch with former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau during an 8000 km canoe journey across Canada; discovering the past and present on a 900 km hiking and kayaking journey from Skagway, Alaska, to Dawson City, Yukon; negotiating the cultural divide during a whitewater paddling expedition in Laos and Cambodia with Russian extreme kayakers; exploring the nature and politics of a multi-billion dollar pipeline in northern BC by hiking, biking and kayaking the GPS track of the proposed project route from the oil sands to the British Columbia coast; conducting a mammal tracking survey in the course of a 120 km ski traverse of Banff National Park; discovering the truth about the existence of Sasquatch in northern Ontario; retracing Viking history during a canoe trip across Scandinavia. Complete with dozens of colour photographs, Wolf weaves together humour, drama and local knowledge to transport readers to some of the outermost corners of the globe in an epic quest to celebrate the freedom to move, explore and be wild.”
“At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State–and to do it alone. She had no experience as a long-distance hiker, and the trail was little more than “an idea, vague and outlandish and full of promise.” But it was a promise of piecing back together a life that had come undone. Strayed faces down rattlesnakes and black bears, intense heat and record snowfalls, and both the beauty and loneliness of the trail. Told with great suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild vividly captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her”.
If you’re looking for some more local inspiration, check out the books by Nicola Ross in our Read Local Caledon collection. Her Loops and Lattes books are especially handy if you’re looking for a good hike and some tasty snacks along the way!
Descriptions provided by Novelist Plus
