A distinguished former foreign correspondent embraces retirement by setting out alone on foot for nearly four hundred miles, and explores a side of America nearly as exotic as the locales from which he once filed. Traveling with an unwieldy pack and a keen curiosity, Christopher Wren bids farewell to the New York Times newsroom in midtown Manhattan and saunters up Broadway, through Harlem, the Bronx, and the affluent New York suburbs of Westchester and Putnam Counties. As his trek takes him into the Housatonic River Valley of Connecticut, the Berkshires of Massachusetts, the Green Mountains of Vermont, and along a bucolic riverbank in New Hampshire, the strenuous challenges become as much emotional as physical. Wren loses his way in a suburban thicket of million-dollar mansions, dodges speeding motorists, seeks serenity at a convent, shivers through a rainy night among Shaker ruins, camps in a stranger's backyard, panhandles cookies and water from a good samaritan, absorbs the lore of the Appalachian and Long Trails, sweats up and down mountains, and lands in a hospital emergency room. Struggling under the weight of a fifty-pound pack, he gripes, "We might grow less addicted to stuff if everything we bought had to be carried on our backs." He hangs out with fellow wanderers named Old Rabbit, Flash, Gatorman, Stray Dog, and Buzzard, and learns gratitude from the anonymous charity of trail angels. His rite of passage into retirement, with its heat and dust and blisters galore, evokes vivid reminiscences of earlier risks taken, sometimes at gunpoint, during his years spent reporting from Russia, China, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, South America, and Africa. He loses track of time, waking with the sun, stopping to eat when hunger gnaws, and camping under starry skies that transform the nights of solitude. For all the self-inflicted hardship, he reports, "In fact, I felt pretty good." Wren has woven an intensely personal story that is candid and often downright hilarious. As Vermont turns from a destination into a state of mind, he concludes, "I had stumbled upon the secret of how utterly irrelevant chronological age is." This book, from the author of the acclaimed bestseller The Cat Who Covered the World, will delight not just hikers, walkers, and other lovers of the outdoors, but also anyone who contemplates retirement, wonders about foreign correspondents, or relishes a lively, off-beat adventure, even when it unfolds close to home.

The acclaimed author of The End of Nature takes a three-week walk from his current home in Vermont to his former home in the Adirondacks and reflects on the deep hope he finds in the two landscapes. Bill McKibben begins his journey atop Vermont’s Mt. Abraham, with a stunning view to the west that introduces us to the broad Champlain Valley of Vermont, the expanse of Lake Champlain, and behind it the towering wall of the Adirondacks. “In my experience,” McKibben tells us, “the world contains no finer blend of soil and rock and water and forest than that found in this scene laid out before me—a few just as fine, perhaps, but none finer. And no place where the essential human skills—cooperation, husbandry, restraint—offer more possibility for competent and graceful inhabitation, for working out the answers that the planet is posing in this age of ecological pinch and social fray.” The region he traverses offers a fine contrast between diverse forms of human habitation and pure wilderness. On the Vermont side, he visits with old friends who are trying to sustain traditional ways of living on the land and to invent new ones, from wineries to biodiesel. After crossing the lake in a rowboat, he backpacks south for ten days through the vast Adirondack woods. As he walks, he contemplates the questions that he first began to raise in his groundbreaking meditation on climate change, The End of Nature: What constitutes the natural? How much human intervention can a place stand before it loses its essence? What does it mean for a place to be truly wild? Wandering Home is a wise and hopeful book that enables us to better understand these questions and our place in the natural world. It also represents some of the best nature writing McKibben has ever done.

An exhilarating and emotional LGBTQ story about the growing relationship between two teen boys, told through the letters written to one another. For fans of Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe and I’ll Give You the Sun. Thrown together by a zealous English teacher's classroom-mailbox assignment, notorious scrapper, Adam "Kurl" Kurlansky, and Jonathan Hopkirk, a flamboyant Walt Whitman wannabe, have to write an old-fashioned letter to each other every week. Kurl is a senior, an ex high school football player, held back a year, while Jo is a nerdy, out tenth grader with a penchant for vintage clothes and a deep love for poetry. They are an unlikely pair, but with each letter, the two begin to develop a friendship that grows into love. But with homophobia, bullying and familial abuse, Jonathan and Kurl must struggle to overcome their conflicts and hold onto their relationship, and each other.

"A Civil War odyssey in the tradition of Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain and Robert Olmstead’s Coal Black Horse, Mosher’s latest, about a Vermont teenager’s harrowing journey south to find his missing-in-action brother, is old-fashioned in the best sense of the word....The story of Morgan’s rite-of-passage through an American arcadia despoiled by war and slavery is an engrossing tale with mass appeal." –Publisher's Weekly Morgan Kinneson is both hunter and hunted. The sharp-shooting 17-year-old from Kingdom County, Vermont, is determined to track down his brother Pilgrim, a doctor who has gone missing from the Union Army. But first Morgan must elude a group of murderous escaped convicts in pursuit of a mysterious stone that has fallen into his possession. It’s 1864, and the country is in the grip of the bloodiest war in American history. Meanwhile, the Kinneson family has been quietly conducting passengers on the Underground Railroad from Vermont to the Canadian border. One snowy afternoon Morgan leaves an elderly fugitive named Jesse Moses in a mountainside cabin for a few hours so that he can track a moose to feed his family. In his absence, Jesse is murdered, and thus begins Morgan’s unforgettable trek south through an apocalyptic landscape of war and mayhem. Along the way, Morgan encounters a fantastical array of characters, including a weeping elephant, a pacifist gunsmith, a woman who lives in a tree, a blind cobbler, and a beautiful and intriguing slave girl named Slidell who is the key to unlocking the mystery of the secret stone. At the same time, he wrestles with the choices that will ultimately define him – how to reconcile the laws of nature with religious faith, how to temper justice with mercy. Magical and wonderfully strange, Walking to Gatlinburg is both a thriller of the highest order and a heartbreaking odyssey into the heart of American darkness.

The bestselling author of "The End of Nature" walks from his current home in Vermont to his former home in the Adirondacks and reflects on the two landscapes, places of diverse human habitation and pure wilderness that share a border.

CLICK HERE to download the difficult hike in New Hampshire up "Smarts Mountain" and the easy hike in Vermont around "Abbey Pond" from Best Hikes with Dogs New Hampshire & Vermont * New Hamshire and Vermont trails rated 1-4 paws to show difficulty for dog owners and their four-legged friends * Terrain that's hazard free and easy on the dog paws * On most trails, no leashes required and no large crowds Lisa Densmore hiked more than 300 miles in New Hampshire and Vermont mostly with her faithful trail companion Bravo, a Chesapeake Bay retriever, but also with other dogs, while researching this book. In Best Hikes with Dogs new Hampshire and Vermontshe shares her favorite trails of easy day hikes to overnight backpacking trips, presented through canine-centric eyes. This guidebook will delight both you and your pet with directions to panoramic views, long ridge walks, lush forests, and pristine lakes. Advice is given on topics such as proper trail etiquette for dogs, wildlife encounters, and weather concerns. Additional features include what to pack for your pooch, including the Ten Canine Essentials, a doggy first aid kit, and a Trail Finder chart that lists hikes by length, terrain, difficulty for dogs, and more.

Discover the best hikes in the Green Mountain State, all doable in a day or less, with this indispensable book from the Appalachian Mountain Club-the definitive source on hiking in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. Fully updated and revised, the second edition of Best Day Hikes in Vermont features 60 of the state's top treks for all ability levels, from recommended stretches of the Long Trail and the Appalachian Trail to Mount Olga in southern Vermont and Mount Independence along Lake Champlain, near the Canadian border. This edition also features new hikes, including Bald, Bromley, Haystack, and Belvidere mountains; Grout Pond and Somerset Reservoir; Barr Hill; and Silvio O. Conte National Fish and Wildlife Refuge. An at-a-glance trip planner makes it easy to find the best trails for families, dogs, snowshoeing, Cross-country skiing, and more. Both visitors and locals alike will delight in exploring Vermont's natural beauty with AMC as a companion. 60 Hiking routes for all ability levels and seasons, At-a-glance trip planner to help you find the hike that's right for you, Summaries of time, distance, and difficulty level for each hike, GPS Coordinates for trailheads, Detailed maps showing parking areas, trails, and natural highlights, Hiking and safety tips, including advice on what to carry in your pack, Essays on the nature and history of the region. Book jacket.