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Walk to New York: A Journey Out of the Wilds of Canada
- GenresNonfiction
312 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2004
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27 people want to read
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Charles Wilkins
65 books5 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. This profile might contain books from several authors.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
August 17, 2018
Redemption
Charles Wilkins, who edited Don Starkwell's excellent Paddle to the Amazon: The Ultimate 12,000-Mile Canoe Adventure, is a Canadian journalist who on April 26th, 2002 began a 63 day trek on foot from Thunder Bay at the far end of Lake Superior to the wilds of New York city. On one hand he left too early as he encounters several gales and snowstorms at the start. On the other hand there is only a short interlude with black flies so perhaps the timing worked out. As an avid day hiker I've never attempted anything quite that ambitious, but much of the middle section of the hike is familiar to me.
A travelogue such as this is either interesting because of the people one meets or the inner struggle and lessons learned. This is not the epic story of a Steve Fonyo or a Terry Fox. Nor is this Paddle-to-the-Sea (perhaps the first travelogue book I ever read and still my favorite), though some of the same tenacity is there. Wilkins both literally and figuratively begins by walking out of his marriage, I should add, by mutual agreement. Both he and his pacer George (who meets up with him at the end of each day) credit the focus and intensity of the exercise as having saved their lives. Perhaps so, but this is also Wilkins' last published book.
The most interesting characters are near the beginning and at the end of the book. North the of Soo (on pp94), he meets Ousmain Sy,a Muslim refugee from Mauritania who wrote his MA thesis in Morocco on human rights abuses in his home country, only to return home to experience them first hand. In the final leg towards New York we meet hillbillies in the Catskills as he makes his way along Highway 9 along and across the Hudson where it changes its name to Broadway and we encounter vibrant mix of Blacks, Latinos and Jews.
After settling in his (complimentary) suite at the Warwick, which certainly got it's money's worth in terms of free publicity, he and George take in George's old neighbourhoods as well as the New York Public Library, the Strand Used Book Store (of course!) and Ground Zero where they somewhat dismayed at the "tourism of terrorist" as families laugh, mug and pose for pictures against the backdrop of tragedy.
The descriptions of geography are interesting and there are plenty of encounters with wild life but except for the description of the white pine forests that were harvested for the masts of great ships and telephone poles, the description of plant life and trees is rather spare, a disappointment as both the Bruce trail and the Appalachians are especially noteworthy for their ecologies. Wilkins also seemed under prepared for the walk in terms of proper socks, not having a water pack (he seems to have subsisted on Gatorade GPS and travel clothing for hiking is not described.
The writing is OK and holds one's interest. Both Wilkins and George undertook this journey of a lifetime to find themselves. At the end both of them do, and George credits the experiences as "having saved his life". If so it was a redemption of an ordinary kind, the kind that keeps one going. I wish them well.
Charles Wilkins, who edited Don Starkwell's excellent Paddle to the Amazon: The Ultimate 12,000-Mile Canoe Adventure, is a Canadian journalist who on April 26th, 2002 began a 63 day trek on foot from Thunder Bay at the far end of Lake Superior to the wilds of New York city. On one hand he left too early as he encounters several gales and snowstorms at the start. On the other hand there is only a short interlude with black flies so perhaps the timing worked out. As an avid day hiker I've never attempted anything quite that ambitious, but much of the middle section of the hike is familiar to me.
A travelogue such as this is either interesting because of the people one meets or the inner struggle and lessons learned. This is not the epic story of a Steve Fonyo or a Terry Fox. Nor is this Paddle-to-the-Sea (perhaps the first travelogue book I ever read and still my favorite), though some of the same tenacity is there. Wilkins both literally and figuratively begins by walking out of his marriage, I should add, by mutual agreement. Both he and his pacer George (who meets up with him at the end of each day) credit the focus and intensity of the exercise as having saved their lives. Perhaps so, but this is also Wilkins' last published book.
The most interesting characters are near the beginning and at the end of the book. North the of Soo (on pp94), he meets Ousmain Sy,a Muslim refugee from Mauritania who wrote his MA thesis in Morocco on human rights abuses in his home country, only to return home to experience them first hand. In the final leg towards New York we meet hillbillies in the Catskills as he makes his way along Highway 9 along and across the Hudson where it changes its name to Broadway and we encounter vibrant mix of Blacks, Latinos and Jews.
After settling in his (complimentary) suite at the Warwick, which certainly got it's money's worth in terms of free publicity, he and George take in George's old neighbourhoods as well as the New York Public Library, the Strand Used Book Store (of course!) and Ground Zero where they somewhat dismayed at the "tourism of terrorist" as families laugh, mug and pose for pictures against the backdrop of tragedy.
The descriptions of geography are interesting and there are plenty of encounters with wild life but except for the description of the white pine forests that were harvested for the masts of great ships and telephone poles, the description of plant life and trees is rather spare, a disappointment as both the Bruce trail and the Appalachians are especially noteworthy for their ecologies. Wilkins also seemed under prepared for the walk in terms of proper socks, not having a water pack (he seems to have subsisted on Gatorade GPS and travel clothing for hiking is not described.
The writing is OK and holds one's interest. Both Wilkins and George undertook this journey of a lifetime to find themselves. At the end both of them do, and George credits the experiences as "having saved his life". If so it was a redemption of an ordinary kind, the kind that keeps one going. I wish them well.
March 20, 2022
"Walk to New York" is a travelogue documenting Wilkins' journey walking from Thunder Bay to New York City. As good adventure stories do, it blends the pragmatic of his walk with the more conceptual of his journey away from a separating marriage and his quest to make sense of the post 9/11 landscape as he trundles into NYC.
In many ways, it's a pretty traditional travel book (as in pulling out interesting characters and vignettes from the broader journey), though it certainly is impacted by the magnitude and variety of the journey rendering these vignettes feeling a little sparse (where I'd normally expect relatively few stories from someone traveling 1,500km through the desert, I was a little surprised to not see more vignettes of the human interactions along the way of a route so urban and populated). I also found the frequency of recounting literary stops (e.g., trying to find the home of some obscure author he happened to know) as opposed to other kinds of interactions (e.g., meeting with some random person along the way, etc) to be a little imbalanced without having sought out the literary connection.
But, it was also exactly what you're likely looking for in such a book. Its pace ambles along at just the right speed, taking you with him on the journey of blisters and blizzards and brews and back roads. It's a comfortable and enjoyable read, perhaps absent any profound life lessons, but a good endurance adventure in which to join Wilkins.
In many ways, it's a pretty traditional travel book (as in pulling out interesting characters and vignettes from the broader journey), though it certainly is impacted by the magnitude and variety of the journey rendering these vignettes feeling a little sparse (where I'd normally expect relatively few stories from someone traveling 1,500km through the desert, I was a little surprised to not see more vignettes of the human interactions along the way of a route so urban and populated). I also found the frequency of recounting literary stops (e.g., trying to find the home of some obscure author he happened to know) as opposed to other kinds of interactions (e.g., meeting with some random person along the way, etc) to be a little imbalanced without having sought out the literary connection.
But, it was also exactly what you're likely looking for in such a book. Its pace ambles along at just the right speed, taking you with him on the journey of blisters and blizzards and brews and back roads. It's a comfortable and enjoyable read, perhaps absent any profound life lessons, but a good endurance adventure in which to join Wilkins.
March 17, 2021
Full disclosure: Charlie is a friend of mine. I love this book. Charlie is an excellent travel companion. Very insightful.
November 30, 2021
Very enjoyable story about something that 99pct of us will never do in a lifetime. Please read.
September 18, 2011
"However, if one thing more than any other attracted me about traditional notions of pilgrimage, it was the suggestion that the spiritual is not just of the air and of the unseen but of the earth underfoot, that there is a transcendent, if not mystic, power in the mountains and forests and waters themselves, and even in the streets of the city. The idea that we absorb the best of the earth's energy through our feet is a correlative here - as is the notion that in dancing on the earth, the soles of the feet are a conductor between the energy of the planet and the spirit of the dancer. All of this resonates with the Native belief that the entire natural world - rock, water, fire, wildlife, trees - is in some way an embodiment of spirit. I have tended to resist the collateral belief that every pebble, pine needle, and raindrop has an individual spiritual essence. Bur there is undeniably something redemptive in the knowledge that the sacred has earthly location and that...we are able to move physically toward spiritual destinations that are more elusive, more difficult to comprehend, when approached in the abstract. If beyond locale and privation my walk bore the earmark of the old-style spiritual journey, in did so largely, I would say, in its provision of the chance to reflect, to rediscover, and to re-arm against the pressures and pessimism that are so much a part of contemporary life." p.173-174
This is the last in a list of travel while walking books I have read over the summer and into the fall. Walking is one of my secret past-times that I have revelled in it as a form of solo exercise, and as an attempt to keep a connection to nature, both of which I feel are very restorative and healthy. Travel, well, I love that too. In his early 50's Charles Wilkins' life has fallen apart and he decides that he is going to walk from Thunder Bay, Ontario to New York City, New York a distance of 2,200 kilometres. He needs to reconnect to himself and reconfigure his life goals, as does his friend whom he recruits, George Morrissette, to be his shelter and food seeker, as well as the driver during the evening hours. George's life is equally discombobulated and he has spend the last 30 years living in Winnipeg, Manitoba after a quick and sad move away from New York in the early 1970's, as the city was becoming unaffordable and crime ridden in the area in which he was attempting to raise his family. He has spent a lifetime looking back, trying to decide if he could have survived as an artist in New York rather than having made the choice to move back to Winnipeg.
During Charles' travels he speaks of the terrain, the history, the weather, his own thoughts and wonderings, which instills picturesque views of some areas and alarm at the weather he endures in others. He meets a small group of people a long the way but truly spends most of his time in solitude placing one foot in front of the other, heading towards his goal. Charles descriptive work was so detailed that I began to walk around my city for two hours at a time, wondering what I would notice, observe, see, think about and learn. A wee bit of bonding betwixt me, Charles, this city (Winnipeg) and nature. If a book about walking can motivate an already avid walker to get up and walk more, it has succeeded in its goal of inspiring readers. It is a quick read and worth your time as Charles draws you into his experiences and you feel a sense of healing as he walks and walks and walks.
This is the last in a list of travel while walking books I have read over the summer and into the fall. Walking is one of my secret past-times that I have revelled in it as a form of solo exercise, and as an attempt to keep a connection to nature, both of which I feel are very restorative and healthy. Travel, well, I love that too. In his early 50's Charles Wilkins' life has fallen apart and he decides that he is going to walk from Thunder Bay, Ontario to New York City, New York a distance of 2,200 kilometres. He needs to reconnect to himself and reconfigure his life goals, as does his friend whom he recruits, George Morrissette, to be his shelter and food seeker, as well as the driver during the evening hours. George's life is equally discombobulated and he has spend the last 30 years living in Winnipeg, Manitoba after a quick and sad move away from New York in the early 1970's, as the city was becoming unaffordable and crime ridden in the area in which he was attempting to raise his family. He has spent a lifetime looking back, trying to decide if he could have survived as an artist in New York rather than having made the choice to move back to Winnipeg.
During Charles' travels he speaks of the terrain, the history, the weather, his own thoughts and wonderings, which instills picturesque views of some areas and alarm at the weather he endures in others. He meets a small group of people a long the way but truly spends most of his time in solitude placing one foot in front of the other, heading towards his goal. Charles descriptive work was so detailed that I began to walk around my city for two hours at a time, wondering what I would notice, observe, see, think about and learn. A wee bit of bonding betwixt me, Charles, this city (Winnipeg) and nature. If a book about walking can motivate an already avid walker to get up and walk more, it has succeeded in its goal of inspiring readers. It is a quick read and worth your time as Charles draws you into his experiences and you feel a sense of healing as he walks and walks and walks.
Read
October 31, 2011From moose skeletons in a ditch to eccentric characters en route, Charles Wilkins takes us with him every step of the way from Thunder Bay to New York. His love of nature and people shines through in this fascinating memoir. Even though his toe nails fall ...off, his feet become bloody messes, he loses an unhealthy amount of weight off his already slight body, and he has to walk backwards at times, through rainstorms, blizzards, and scorching heat, he refuses to stop and seldom rests. He seems driven to complete this journey on his own terms; failure is not an option. There is more going on here than a desire for fodder for another book. Whether he is sharing fresh caught fish with a First Nations person, exploring the history an architecture of a community, examining man's appalling impact on nature, or bemoaning the lack of recognition of a great writer, a sense of coming to terms with his person lose threads throughout. A fascinating read.
September 3, 2018
A fun and thoughtful read. Unfortunately, the section on our own little piece of landscape wasn't all that exciting. When I was reading I pictured Chaucer walking in "A Knight's Tale"! ha ha ha
It certainly shows how little some people walk in a day preferring the more temperate climate of a car or speed of travel that almost every other mode of transportation offers. He also highlights some of the advantages of taking to foot.
It certainly shows how little some people walk in a day preferring the more temperate climate of a car or speed of travel that almost every other mode of transportation offers. He also highlights some of the advantages of taking to foot.
March 14, 2013
This book made me want to go on a very, very long walk. I think I would have started from somewhere a little more interesting than Thunder Bay, but I am glad the author started there since I don't know that much about the northern part of my province and I definitely feel like I got to know it a lot better while reading this!
December 29, 2009
I cant even imagine how liberating it must feel to just decide I m going to walk to new york, leave the house and start the journey! Amazing and inspiring, however I think I will start my journey with a walk to the grocery store and go from there :P
October 13, 2011
A great holiday when you can't go on one. Made more enjoyable when you have done some of the journey by any means and stayed for example in the hostel just outside of Thunderbay. It was such a pleasure to read and actual discover second hand. It is one I will share and keep on my bookcase.
May 8, 2009
I enjoyed this. It was sort of all over the place and a lot of ideas weren't fully developed but it was a nice book and a neat adventure. I wish I could walk from Ontario to New York.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews