Can you tell the difference between wolf and dog prints? Which trees are best to shelter under a storm? How do you tell a deciduous and coniferous tree apart? Bestselling author of The Hidden Life of trees, Peter Wohlleben, lets you in on the quintessentials of his forestry knowledge. He invites you on an atmospheric journey of discovery. Learn to find your way around the woods without a compass or GPS, which berries and mushrooms are good to eat, how to read animal tracks and what it's like to spend a night alone in a forest. Walks in the Wild has everything you need to make a woodland walk - be it spring, summer, autumn or winter - into a very special experience.

'One of the best books I've read in the last five or ten years... Wild is angry, brave, sad, self-knowing, redemptive, raw, compelling, and brilliantly written, and I think it's destined to be loved by a lot of people, men and women, for a very long time.' Nick Hornby

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe—and built her back up again. 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. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State—and she would do it alone. Told with suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild powerfully captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.

Are you ready to take a walk on the seriously wild side? In the early 1980s, John Pakenham walked a total of 1,500 miles, with a series of companions from the local Turkana and Samburu tribes and their long-suffering donkeys, around a lake in the Great Rift Valley of northern Kenya. Repeatedly beset by extreme thirst and dehydration, bitterly cold torrential rains, poisonous spiders, vindictive mosquitoes and the ever-present threat of bandits, not to mention a fatal fight between two of his companions, he was lucky to live to tell his tale. Pakenham's account provides a rare glimpse of a tough terrain and its even tougher inhabitants, where every day was a battle for survival. This is extreme travel that, four decades on, still packs a powerful punch.

From the New York Times-bestselling author of The Hidden Life of Trees, this guide to awakening your senses and engaging deeply with the forest is the perfect gift for hikers and walkers. “This book will fast-track you into the joys of spending time amongst the trees.”—Tristan Gooley, author of The Lost Art of Reading Nature’s Signs and How to Read Water "You'll be changed after reading this fine and enchanting book.”—Richard Louv, author of Our Wild Calling and Last Child in the Woods When you walk in the woods, do you use all five senses to explore your surroundings? For most of us, the answer is no—but when we do, a walk in the woods can go from pleasant to immersive and restorative. Forest Walking teaches you how to engage with the forest by decoding nature’s signs and awakening to the ancient past and thrilling present of the ecosystem around you. What can you learn by following the spread of a root, by tasting the tip of a branch, by searching out that bitter almond smell? What creatures can be found in a stream if you turn over a rock—and what is the best way to cross a forest stream, anyway? How can you understand a forest’s history by the feel of the path underfoot, the scars on the trees along the trail, or the play of sunlight through the branches? How can we safely explore the forest at night? What activities can we use to engage children with the forest? Throughout Forest Walking, the authors share experiences and observations from visiting forests across North America: from the rainforests and redwoods of the west coast to the towering white pines of the east, and down to the cypress swamps of the south and up to the boreal forests of the north. With Forest Walking, German forester Peter Wohlleben teams up with his longtime editor, Jane Billinghurst, as the two write their first book together, and the result is nothing short of spectacular. Together, they will teach you how to listen to what the forest is saying, no matter where you live or which trees you plan to visit next.

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. An instant classic, riotously funny, A Walk in the Woods will add a whole new audience to the legions of Bill Bryson fans.

Selected as a Book of the Year by the Financial Times, the Daily Telegraph and the Spectator "Travel writing in excelsis." -Jan Morris, author of Venice "A thrilling and gorgeous tale, packed with meteorological wonder." -Amy Liptrot, author of The Outrun Nick Hunt sets off on an unlikely quest: to follow four of Europe's winds across the continent. His wind-walks begin on Cross Fell, the highest point of the Pennines, as he chases the roaring Helm - the only named wind in Britain.In southern Europe he follows the Bora - a bitter northerly that blows from Trieste through Slovenia and down the Croatian coast. His hunt for the "snow-eating" Foehn becomes a meandering journey of exhilaration and despair through the Alpine valleys of Switzerland, and his final walk traces an ancient pilgrims' path in the south of France on the trail of the Mistral - the "wind of madness," which animated and tormented Vincent Van Gogh. These are journeys into wild wind, but also into wild landscapes and the people who inhabit them - a cast of meteorologists, storm chasers, mountain men, eccentric wind enthusiasts, sailors and shepherds. Soon Nick finds himself borne along by the very forces he is pursuing, through rain, blizzards, howling gales, and back through time itself. For, where the wild winds are, there are also myths and legends, history and hearsay, science and superstition - and occasionally remote mountain cabins packed with pickles, cured meats and homemade alcohol. Where the Wild Winds Are is a beautiful, unconventional travelogue that makes the invisible visible.