The Divide: a 2700 Mile Search for Answers, by Nathan Doneen

The Divide: a 2700 mile search for answers by Nathan Doneen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Several years ago, I got hooked on reading about hiking the Appalachian Trail. I had wanted to hike the AP ever since I'd heard about it in my early teens, to the point of mentioning it to my parents.

Fast forward more than two or three decades: Life happened, and, of course, I never got around to that grand hike. Even now, it would be a splendid idea, except...well, you get the idea.

(And for the record, I have read Ben Montgomery's wonderful book, Grandma Gatewood's Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail, so while I'm quite a bit younger than Grandma Gatewood was when she made her walk, I realize that age is no excuse.)

Recently, I stumbled across The Divide: a 2700 mile search for answers by Nathan Doneen. While it was somewhat different from hiking the AT books (it involves biking the Continental Divide), I was still intrigued. Then I made the mistake of starting to read, and was hooked from the start.

After finishing college, Nathan decided to bike the Continental Divide from Alberta, Canada to Mexico before settling down. The Divide describes his trip, beginning with the first major problem, two miles into the trek. He intersperses his ride with an occasional flash-back to his college studies, and other scenes from his past. While this could have been a distraction, he does it so that it rounds out his story, showing us glimpses of how he got to deciding to ride.

There were only a couple of things here that I found a little distracting. Early on, the word "here" was used for "hear;" however, this may have simply been a glitch, as I was reading this on a Kindle. (I've noticed glitches of wrong words in other books on e-readers, knowing full well that the correct word was used in the hard copy of the same books.) The other was using "that" instead of "who/whom:" "She was someone that loved books;" "He was someone that thought..." I'm sure someone would say that I'm being picky here, and that's fine. But when these are basically the only two things that detract from the book, I can hardly complain.

If you're looking for your next good read, I definitely recommend Nathan Doneen's The Divide: a 2700 mile search for answers.

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Wild: From Lost To Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, by Cheryl Strayed

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Many of us have, at one time or another, wondered what we would do if we had several months of free time. I had thought it might be interesting to walk the Appalacian Trail; Cheryl Strayed decided, instead, to walk the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), which she chronicled in her memori Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail.

In her early twenties, Strayed went through a rough several years: the death of her mother to a recently diagnosed cancer, the slow drifting away from her step-father and siblings, and the end of her first marriage. Needing to get away and find her center, Strayed decided to hike the PCT, a feat made even more remarkable when one considers that she had not hiked any distance prior to starting out.

Wild is, for the most part, an intense, quick read. The beginning of the book describes her mother's relatively sudden death after an advanced cancer diagnosis and how Strayed cares for her mother is slightly reminiscent of parts of Anna Quindlen's novel One True Thing. While this section seemed to drag a little, as well as the break-up of Strayed's marriage, both sections are needed to help the reader understand her state of mind and why she felt the need to get out and hike the PCT. Her descriptions of the trail, the people she meets along the trail - who are somewhat few and far between and predominantly men - and the sense of peace the hike gave her make the book an interesting read.

There were only a few places in the book that, I felt, Strayed could have condensed. One place was when she and her brothers had to put down her late mother's old, sick horse, Lady. It was obviously quite traumatic for Strayed. However, she goes into way more detail of the horse's death than is necessary. Also, near the end of the book, she met up with a man working at a bar who she got to know very intimately during the few days they were together. That section, too, could have been condenses; suffice it to say that what she's written of the encounter would have made a fantastic erotic short story. Then there's the heroin experimentation. Those three sections - or, rather, the elaboration in those three sections - make Wild questionable for very young or very sensitive readers.

This is not to say that the book should be ignored. It is, for the most part, a truly amazing memoir, one that should be read more than once.

View all my reviews Note: To read my review about two books on hiking the Appalacian Trail, click here. There, you'll read aboutAWOL On The APpalachian Trail, by David Miller, and Dennis Blanchard's Three Hundred Zeros.