This is one of the top two books I have read on someone’s thru hike of the Appalachian Trail. It came very close to one other book and the reason I chose this book was because it included some of AWOL’s own personal thoughts that he was thinking during his thru hike. To me that gave it a personal touch and put things into prospective. The one thing I think he should have included more of was posting the dates as to help put the whole thing into a timeframe. I had a hard time placing a mental timeframe when reading this. Others may not have a problem at all. That was my only thing that could have been improved on. He could have included some more of his personal thoughts but then I realized a lot of people do not want to read about some personal stuff but only want to read about the trail and the experiences on it. To me the worries and heartache and concerns a person is thinking about is also part of the trail experience too. I gave me ideas of some of the mental things I need to prepare for when I do my thru hike.
The reading was very down to earth and easy to keep up with. I liked the comments on the bottoms of the pages that explained the hiker slang and where he sometimes explained things about other hikers and locations and even what happen later on to hikers that he mentioned. I think these are called cliff notes. I know most of the hiker slang but for hikers that are thinking about thru hiking and do not know this stuff it will help them out a lot. The pictures where an added bonus and not bad for black and white either.
I am a very slow reader and sometimes when I start reading a book I will put it down for a month or two sometimes before I pick it back up again. This one I could not put down. I have a very short lunch break at work where I work and I would read this during my lunch break every day. I use to read the newspaper during my lunch break but once I started this book I did not read a newspaper again until I was done reading the book.
I would highly recommend this book as a good read. The one thing I would point out about this book to someone that is planning to thru hike the Appalachian Trail is that 95% or more of the hikers that thru hike the Appalachian Trail do not hike high mileage days like AWOL did. Other then that it was a great book and I highly recommend it.