On the Beaten Path: An Appalachian Pilgrimage - Softcover

Rubin, Robert Alden

3.81

537 ratings by Goodreads

9781585743971: On the Beaten Path: An Appalachian Pilgrimage

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1585743976 ISBN 13: 9781585743971

Publisher: UNKNO, 2001

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An eloquent, wise, and witty account of how one man's six-month, end-to-end hike of the Appalachian Trail led him back home.

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Review:

Why have we quit our jobs, left our wives, our husbands, our children, left school, interrupted perfectly good retirements, put off promising careers? Why come to the woods for half a year of rodents and rain?

On April Fool's Day 1997, 38-year-old Robert Alden Rubin leaves his puzzled wife and a burnt-out career to became a pilgrim named Rhymin' Worm on the Appalachian Trail, joining a couple thousand other "thruhikers" on the way. Through 2,160 miles of shin splints, feet turned to hamburger, muscle revolt, intestinal distress, hantavirus, freezing and broiling weather, malnutrition, missing spouses and children, bear and bull-moose encounters, and serious injuries, he and his fellow travelers--a motley subculture if ever there was one--endure, even thrive.

To the very end, Rubin is not sure why he's made this journey. But the combination of getting away from the "normal" world of work, commuting, suburbs, and capitalist culture and joining a group of outsiders in pursuit of a single goal seems to fill the space in his soul that the normal world carved out over the years. He emerges at the end of the trail, in Vermont, with an inkling of why he's on the path:

We've walked this crooked trail to mend the crazing of our lives; we reek of sweat and smoke, wear Gore-Tex shells to turn the storm away, take on new names, our talk all aches, and boots, and food; and yet we yearn to strip the armor from our hearts, to wash ourselves in mountain rain and air until, like the wild columbine and black cohosh, we can be merely what we are, until out of the stone-strewn ground we bloom again, until the weathered sign on Baxter Peak points along the path to where we've been.

On the Beaten Path is by turns somber, silly, philosophical, historical, even mundane, but mostly, it's touching. Alden's courage to rescue his life from what could have been a featureless future is inspiring, and his honesty about his shortcomings makes his inner world accessible to readers who may not share his demons. --Stefanie Durbin

From the Back Cover:

Of the "thruhikers" who set out to walk the entire Appalachian Trail, about one in every ten actually makes it. Robert Rubin's chances did not look good. Thirty-eight years old, dispirited, and burned out by a job he'd once loved, he dreamed of leaving mortgage and wife and cul-de-sac life behind for a journey that could take half a year - or perhaps never end. On the wooded ridges Rubin found himself part of a strange vagrant culture of pilgrims and dropouts, a world with its own rules and rituals. With eloquence and humor, he recounts his trek - the people he met, the landscapes he passed through, the spiritual and physical endurance involved (despite a diet heavy in Snickers bars and macaroni & cheese, he lost seventy-five pounds along the way). On the Beaten Path is a wise, witty look at one of the few remaining pilgrimages in our ironic disillusioned age. (6 x 9, 256 pages, maps)

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