View Full Version : What do you read on trail?
Do you carry reading material & if so, who is your favorite author or genre to read while hiking? If not, why? Do you carry the whole book & send it home or do you leave parts in shelters/burn it (Other)?
I carry a list of my favorite quotes, about 4 pages. And later in the hike (about 2nd week) I have a book sent to me from my stock of small lightweight books. I have everything from Shakespeare to Walden to Sci-Fi & others. I personally am not a very picky reader, but I have no “romance novels” or hard reading stuff (I don’t usually read King Lear on trail). I carry the entire book, & toss it in the trash or campfire when I’m done with a section so my book gets lighter as I hike.
I have seen on the trail a lot of people reading Tolkien & other adventure type stories, and seen a few romances & one Campmor catalog left in the shelters.
Doctari.
Hammock Hanger
02-12-2004, 21:52
A friend turned me onto this. Save all the book sections of the Readers Digest Magazine. They are short and light you can throw them away after reading and they are easy to put in your maildrops. Hammock Hanger
Do you carry reading material & if so, who is your favorite author or genre to read while hiking? If not, why? Do you carry the whole book & send it home or do you leave parts in shelters/burn it (Other)?
I carry a list of my favorite quotes, about 4 pages. And later in the hike (about 2nd week) I have a book sent to me from my stock of small lightweight books. I have everything from Shakespeare to Walden to Sci-Fi & others. I personally am not a very picky reader, but I have no “romance novels” or hard reading stuff (I don’t usually read King Lear on trail). I carry the entire book, & toss it in the trash or campfire when I’m done with a section so my book gets lighter as I hike.
I have seen on the trail a lot of people reading Tolkien & other adventure type stories, and seen a few romances & one Campmor catalog left in the shelters.
Doctari.
screwysquirrel
02-12-2004, 23:51
I always carry a paperback with me and grab some more when I go to town. I read more on the trail than I do when I'm home ,cause there's more free time out there to read.
The Old Fhart
02-13-2004, 00:03
At the risk of incuring the wrath of hardcopy fanatics, I'll tell you I carried 23 novels plus the complete bible. All this on my 11 oz. palmtop that also had the complete databook and my journal. It was powered by 2 AA batteries. Also my compact flash card based FM radio/MP3 player had 150 tunes plus talking books. It is really great fun to be hiking and listening to Bill Bryson reading "A Walk in the Woods" . Really gets your spirits up!
Carry what you want but keep in mind that some hikers don't like to see discarded books in the shelters.
Kerosene
02-13-2004, 01:07
I slowly read through a mildly humorous book about a Englishman hitching his way around Ireland with a mini-fridge on a bet. Since I don't read every single night of my annual week-long section hikes, it took me 3 years to finish! I periodically would rip out the pages and dispose of them when I threw out my other trash.
Shelter registers. By far the most entertaining reading on the trail.
jojo0425
02-13-2004, 11:26
Because of work and school, I have little time to read "fun" stuff. So on the trail I always pack a paperback novel. My first year I read "A Walk in the Woods". Other hikers thought I was crazy...I was laying in my tent laughing outloud. Last year I went a little deeper and read "The Life of Pi". Enjoyed it tremendously, almost wanted to stop hiking and read all day, though. So whatever you bring, make sure it is not going to distract you from finishing you hike :-D
When I did my section hike on the AT I carried JF Coopers, "The Pioneers". This is the only one of the Leatherstocking Tales (Last of the Mohicans is chronologically the second) that I would consider actually a good work of literature and is the earliest environmentalist/conservationist novel that I've found. A very good read indeed. On this hike I would generally stop by 6 or 6:30 and so have some time on my hands in the evening to read. However, I've found that joys of hiking until 8 or 9 now, so I don't carry a book any more. The late light and the increase in animal activity are just too much to give up for laying about in camp.
Do you carry reading material & if so, who is your favorite author or genre to read while hiking? If not, why? Do you carry the whole book & send it home or do you leave parts in shelters/burn it (Other)?
.........................................
i carry a pocket-size New Testament (Bible) a pocket size A.A."Big Book",
pages from the latest A.T.Data book & A.T.Trail guide (for the particular section i'm hiking) & to be quite frank....i'm so darn tired by the end of most days....i just eat, write in my journal & read for a few minutes & i'm "out like a light!" :o z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z
see ya'll UP the trail
smokymtnsteve
02-13-2004, 13:04
Edward Abbey...
"The best thing about graduating from the university was that I finally had time to sit on a log and read a good book."
the words of abbey
Sleepy the Arab
02-13-2004, 19:21
Let's see... In 2001 I read the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Fahrenheit 451 by Bradbury, Good Omens by Neil Gaiman, and Dave Barry's first work of fiction, the abominable Big Trouble. On my hike two years prior, I read less, but managed to put away part of Machiavelli's The Prince, Excerpts from Whitman's Leaves of Grass (surprise!) and Steven King's The Stand. I found that reading on the trail is a mixed bag. If you find yourself in the depths of a good novel, you miss out on the fraternizing with your fellow hikers.
Then again, how much fraternizing can one really do?