Across most of the northern hemisphere, the Christmas season has always been a time for quiet contemplation rather than hectic activity, the time for thinking things through rather than actually doing them.
For hikers, it is a time for remembering past adventures and for planning new ones – and for reading about hikes from the comfort of their armchair.
If you are looking for reading material about specific hikes and hiking in general: here are some cozy Christmas reading for hikers, culled from the pages of magazines and newspapers over the past year
1. What Happens to Your Body When You Hike the Appalachian Trail
I want to start with a piece that tells it pretty much as it is, without bullshit or lyrical embellishments. Nearly everything in this article rings true.
The changing sleeping patterns, the pains of the long walk, the new relationship with your body as a “working dog“, the Zen-like clarity of your mind and the ease with which new ideas and solutions for seemingly intractable problems of the past seem to be forthcoming once you have been forced to concentrate on something totally different for a while (the “creativity” induced by hiking).
All this from that well-known literary magazine called …. Buzzfeed. Hmmm. Well, Christmas is, after all, the season for surprises. (3000 words)
2. He Went on a Hike – And Never Stopped Walking
And if you liked that, you will probably also like the next piece. This is an excerpt from the same book, written in a somewhat different register but recognisably with the same style. (2500 words)
3. An Unorthodox Sunday Tradition
Christmas may be the season of surprises, but it is also a celebration of beloved traditions, and one of these seasonal traditions requires any compilation such as this one to include at least one feel-good piece.
Well, here it is, and it deals with – how “mega” can you get – family traditions, or more specifically with one religiously diverse family’s use of hiking as a ritual around which everybody can unite. 1100 words.
4. Motel Living and Slowly Dying
Now for something completely different. If you were to watch different productions of the same play every evening for twelve months – even if you had no formal training in the dramatic arts whatsoever – you would have, at the end of this year, a deeper knowledge of this play’s deep structures as well as of its finer points than anyone on earth, with the possible exception of its author.
Something like that also happens when you travel. On the road, you inevitably become an expert for certain regular routines, making increasingly keen observations about things that others take for granted or never seem to notice.
Take hotels, for example: for the occasional traveller, they are places where to sleep and have a shower and that’s pretty much it, but if you visit ten, twenty or fifty hotels a year, you will begin to develop opinions about different styles of interior decoration, shower curtains, breakfast juice, you name it.
If you find this whole process interesting: here is a message from a fellow soul. (1700 words)
5. The Tree Farm
Forests in Europe are sometimes disparagingly labelled as tree farms, not entirely without reason (in this day and age, essentially that’s what they are).
Wild forests are rare in Europe, and where they do exist, they have more often than not been artificially re-wilded. The imprint of human hands, once it has been left behind, is difficult to erase.
Which is why it is best to accept Europe for what it is: an environment where nature and human culture have acted upon each other for thousands of years.
But not all forms of human culture are equally intrusive, and as there are different types of farming in general, some more in tune with the rhythms of nature than others, there are also different types of tree-farming.
While continental practices – with their gradual felling and replacement of mature trees – approach the organic end of the scale, Scotland’s forest economy of clear felling plays the role of its brutal antagonist.
If you want to find out more about such tree farms, their history and what they look and feel like, you should read this article. (6200 words)
6. The Genius of Winding Paths
The next piece is a book review, which is only slightly hampered by the wish to tell you more about the book’s central character – the landscaping architect Frederick Law Olmsted – than the book itself, which seems to consist largely of old plans and maps.
The review takes roughly 2000 words, half of its entire length, to arrive at its topic, which is the beauty of Central Park, but then quickly finds its stride and asserts (with thought-provoking elegance) that Central Park “holds a legitimate claim to being America’s finest manmade object”.
Visiting that New York institution would be great for a Christmas walk, but if you cannot squeeze that into your busy holiday schedule, reading this piece may very well be the next best thing. (4000 words)
7. Naples – A Photo Essay
Finally, a practical tip. If you are of a literary bent, there is a good chance that your stockings will have been filled with the Neapolitan novels of Elena Ferrante this Christmas, which have found a wide English-speaking readership over the past few years. It is difficult to read these books without developing the wish to explore their Neapolitan settings, so here is a guide of how best to proceed. (1500 words)
