A Summer Reading List About Hiking

When you read this, we will probably be on our way, exploring the hiking trails, castles and vineyards of southwestern Germany on the invitation of the Rhineland-Palatinate Tourism Board. More of that soon.

We will be away all of this week and try to keep you up to date as much as we can, but life as a hiking blogger has one great disadvantage: posting from the trip itself is always slightly problematic.

The thing is, I love my computer dearly – and I love my wife as dearly – but I would not want to carry her around with me in my backpack nor will I stuff it in the little luggage I bring either.

So we shall see what we can do with our mobile device and the connections we can get in rural Germany. We hope that we will be able to post a brief note here and there, together with the odd picture. Anything more elaborate than that will have to wait until we’re back.

In the meantime, to give you something to read for the time we are away, I will provide you with a summer reading list about hiking from the press, which you may have missed and that are well worth a look.

A Summer Reading List About Hiking

1. How Auvergne Made Me A Hiker

First: a definition of easy hiking. Actually, what these guys are doing is not all that easy, but it’s the attitude that counts. (Also, you can always tell yourself: if that guy can do it, so could I.)

2. Fairytale Road*

The next guy takes it so easy that he resists all temptation of doing any hiking at all. Surely, some way on the “German fairy tale road”, there must have been some opportunity of walking “into the forest” rather than just talking about or looking at it from a distance.

But no, apparently not. Still, it’s about Germany, forests and all, and it will surely give you ideas of how to explore and experience this area in some other way than from the backseat of a car.

3. The American West 150 Years Ago

Time for the half time show and a pictorial interlude with 19^th century photographs from the American West – which has not changed all that much, if you think about it (it probably has not changed a great deal since the last Ice Age), only the towns and the town folks have. (It’s still big: it’s the people that got small.):

4. London Walks

And now for something completely different: a hike around one of the world’s greatest and busiest cities, camping tents and all.

5. Blissfully Lost In The Woods

Finally, a rather profound piece about the value of hiking, of having and of sharing immediate experiences of nature and … but I don’t want to paraphrase too much, because Mr. Kristof says it so much better than I ever could.

*Some articles listed on this summer reading list may not be live anymore