Wandering Home: A Long Walk Across America's Most Hopeful Landscape: Vermont's Champlain Valley and New York's Adirondacks

Crown Journeys Series

by Bill McKibben

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.

Genres: Nonfiction, Travel, Nature, Environment, Memoir, Adventure, Outdoors

160 pages, Hardcover

First published April 5, 2005

About the author

Bill McKibben is the author of Eaarth, The End of Nature, Deep Economy, Enough, Fight Global Warming Now, The Bill McKibben Reader, and numerous other books. He is the founder of the environmental organizations Step It Up and 350.org, and was among the first to warn of the dangers of global warming. In 2010 The Boston Globe called him "probably the nation's leading environmentalist," and Time magazine has called him "the world's best green journalist." He studied at Harvard, and started his writing career as a staff writer at The New Yorker. The End of Nature, his first book, was published in 1989 and was regarded as the first book on climate change for a general audience. He is a frequent contributor to magazines and newspapers including The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, Orion Magazine, Mother Jones, The New York Review of Books, Granta, Rolling Stone, and Outside. He has been awarded Guggenheim Fellowship and won the Lannan Prize for nonfiction writing in 2000. He is a scholar in residence at Middlebury College and lives in Vermont with his wife, the writer Sue Halpern, and their daughter.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/billmc...

Reviews

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read about a beautiful section of the country and one that I've been lucky enough to live in and wander through for much of my life.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book chronicles a walk from one state to another along the boundary of a glacial lake, but the way McKibben describes it, it is so much more. It is a cultural divide, a socioeconomic divide. I was hoping for more nature, but McKibben plainly states "I am not a naturalist". He mentions a few trees, a few birds, but the book is more about the journey from one place to another.

Starting near Robert Frost's cabin near Ripton, Vermont, McKibben just starts walking - hiking, really - towards Lake Champlain, eventually crossing it, and meeting up with some people along parts of the trails. He winds and weaves through passes and forests, crossing over into the "wilderness" of the East: New Y0rk's Adirondacks, ending near Garnet Lake, New York.


Picture from The Nature Conservancy

It's an enjoyable read, especially if you are familiar with McKibben's work, and the people he meets along the way. I have never been to this particular area of the country, and the book made me want to explore it more. I felt that there was A LOT more story here, but appreciated it for what it was: a love letter to the area he calls home.

[Preeti · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had this book reserved prior to my trip to Vermont last month, but I ended up receiving it after I returned. As it turned out, that was actually a good thing.

We were only in Vermont for a few days so it wasn't like I got the "full experience" of what living there is like, but we spent a lot of time driving around and visiting local places so it was a nice introduction. It turned out that this brief intro was helpful when I started reading this book because while I didn't visit most of the places mentioned, I still was able to picture them, as well as have a feeling for Vermont life while reading.

So far, including this one, I've read three Crown Journeys books. While they all fall into the general travel genre, I've found that you never know what you're going to get in each book. With this, I thought it was going to be a standard "experiences in Vermont" type book, focused on hiking in particular. But I got much, much more than that.

While it is about the author hiking through Vermont and into the Adirondacks in New York, the book is more a philosophical reflection of our place within nature, and particularly the wilderness. And the author calls it "wandering," not hiking, which I felt was accurate in terms of his actual journey and the thoughts expressed throughout his trip.

Bill McKibben is the author of The End of Nature (which I have yet to read!), a book exploring environmental issues and their effects, and how we need a fundamental shift in how we view nature and our place within it if we are ever to solve these problems. (I'm basing this on reading the blurb about the book and a couple of reviews.) That originally came out in 1989, and this book seems to tread some of the same issues, but also touches on ways people are trying to make a difference in Vermont.

There is some of the "typical Vermont" that you think of:

Subarus are to Vermont what bicycles were once to Beijing, so nearly ubiquitous that it's impossible to recognize your neighbor by his vehicle. The supermarket parking lot might as well be a Subaru dealership. (p20)

But while wandering through, McKibben visits and introduces us to farmers, professors, students, birders, other environmentalists - a whole host of characters who have found their homes throughout the region and are working on ways to make it better. Sometimes he talks about the huge and long-term effort it takes to turn an environmental issues into something positive:

It takes longer to be responsible, in logging as in every other thing on the Earth. (p26)

Overall, McKibben comes off as somewhat curmudgeonly but I usually found it hard to disagree with most of what he says. There are moments of optimism:

To be around young people, who haven't yet made all the compromises and concessions that life will urge them to make, and to see them finding older people who can help them go a different way, is to be reminded that the world really is constantly fresh, and that therefore despair for its prospects is not required. (p51)

Of course, considering my interests, my favorite sections were when he discusses wildlife conservation. For example, there is a lot of worry around the world about invasive species - animals that make a place within an environment to which they are not native and end up wreaking havoc (see: lionfish in Florida). McKibben explores some of that while hanging out with Warren King, conservation biologist and birder:

If we're going to talk about wildness, and believe me we are, we have to face the truth that it's a little hard to separate out the natural and the artificial, a little hard to figure out exactly where we're planting our feet. For instance: this afternoon Warren and I are standing on a little bridge above Dead Creek a few miles south of the waterfowl refuge. "You notice how the water is kind of mocha here?" he asks. "One reason is the clay soils - the particles get stirred up all the way along the creek by carp fanning their tails." But carp are an exotic species, introduced from afar. So is the mocha color "right"? (p66)

He goes on to talk about more at-one-time-invasive species, that have made a home in the area, and how some of them are wiping out native species, while at the same time, creating their own niche and becoming helpful to other species in the area. McKibben continues,

So do you wring your hands over this, rooting for the dogwood and the prickly ash, rooting up the buckthorn? Or do you just decide that nature is whatever it is - that since the world is in constant flux, there's no real damage that can be done to it? (p67)

These questions of what constitutes the natural, what composes the real, when you draw the baseline, how much change a place can stand before it loses it essence - they are the questions that will grow stronger and louder the farther west we go, into the Adirondack wild (whatever "wild" means). (p69)

I found the discussion of what "wild" really means anymore fascinating. This was somewhat touched upon in Craig Child's The Animal Dialogues, though I think he still distinguishes between "scenic wilderness" that you may find in a park versus true, wild wilderness. McKibben, however, wonders if this "wild" really exists anymore.

Was our place wild, or natural, anymore? For that matter, was any place? The peculiar physics of global warming mean, in fact, that the North and South Poles will be hardest hit - that is, the places that really are free of any other human history, really are wild if any place is wild, might just as well be in the middle of the eastern megalopolis or the SoCal suburbs. (p99).

However, he goes on to add that "the idea that there is no such thing as pure wilderness has made the relative wild all the more precious." (p100)

For me, then, one of the reasons for wild places is so other people can fall in love with them — because surely there are others wired like me, for whom this landscape w ill be enough. Enough to reorient their compass in a new direction, too. Most of the time now we live under a kind of spell, a lulling enchantment sung by the sirens of our consumer society, telling us what will make us happy. That enchantment is a half-truth at best — you don't need to look very hard at our culture to see that deep happiness is not its hallmark. But breaking that spell requires something striking. For some, it requires seeing how poor people really live, or understanding the depth of our ecological trouble. Or, maybe better, it requires seeing other possibilities, the kind of possibilities I've been describing on this trip. A world where neighbors provide more for each other, growing food and bottling wine and making music, a world where we could take our pleasure more in the woods than in the mall. A world where hyperindividualism begins to fade in the face of working human and natural communities. (p134)

I'm not sure how wide the appeal for this book might be, but I'd definitely recommend it for environmentalists, conservationists, and others, like me, interested in these kinds of issues. It will certainly give you a lot to think about and absorb. This was not what I expected out of this short book about wandering through Vermont but it was more than worth it!

[Aaron · Rating 2 out of 5]

"It was ok."

I didn't dislike this, but I couldn't really think of too many positive things to write about it, either. It made me want to visit the Adirondacks more than I did before reading, though I got rather subtle vibes that the locals and the author himself (who is not native to the area, I might add) wouldn't be all that thrilled to have me.

I expected the book to be more about the landscape and the Adirondacks themselves, the wildlife and the wilderness, etc. but it's more about the people that live there and how they feel about the area. The author is seldom alone on his journey, and constantly has friends and acquaintances joining him on day-hikes as he himself makes a 16 day trip across the region between his two homes. Yes, his two homes. He often goes on long tangents not only about the people he's walking with, but friends of friends as well and I often forgot where the topic even began or what the point was.

The author is an environmentalist, and I thought I would relate to him and his book there, but I disagreed with him on his stances and points almost as often as not.

Clearly this book worked for some people; it just didn't work for me. Perhaps because I've never been there. Perhaps because I was expecting something else when I picked it up, or perhaps because it didn't really bring up any topics or points which I found all that fresh or thoughtful. That's not to say it doesn't bring up thoughtful points, just nothing that I haven't already thought about or read elsewhere. In fact I think this book was ruined for me by Earl V. Shaffer's "Walking with Spring", an awesome biography about being the first person to hike the entire Appalachian Trail from start to finish. I feel that his book is far more informative about the landscape and people than this book was. So go read that if you're interested in this.

I don't want to tell anyone NOT to read "Wandering Home", (and this is another reason I'm reluctant to give out stars), but go read it if you're interested and make up your own mind. For me, personally, it just didn't do much.

[Jukka]

Wandering Home - Bill McKibben

Having hiked this area (the Adirondacks and Vermont are in this book, but also Massachusetts and New Hampshire) quite a bit i enjoyed this read. It's lots of the common naturalist book stuff though, it's the geography that makes this book special to me.

Funny about this book, although it's not fabulous it is a book i want to own and have on my book shelf. I think it's because this is the sort of book you can pick up and read a few pages at random and find them meaningful, while the book as a whole isn't compelling. Why do we expect compelling? I think it's a simple matter of this book lacking a precise focus; Which again why do we necessarily expect that?

Aside: This is published under Crown Journeys an imprint for Random House. There is a whole series that match interesting writers to projects writing about specific places to travel. Also similar is New Directions an imprint for W.W. Norton (see my review for Among Flowers by Jamaica Kincaid).

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been reading this slowly, to savor the words of a brilliant writer and naturalist. Bill McKibben has the depth of understanding to make the connections between the disparate natural worlds of Edward Abbey and Wendell Berry, to recognize and, yes, celebrate the tensions between conservation and progress, and to appreciate both tradition and innovation, the primeval and the sophisticated. McKibben makes the case for respect, vision, mindfulness, and humility in wilderness management; hence one of my favorite quotes, near the end of the book: "'Management' of anything as complicated as a woods requires more humility than comes easily to our species, at least in its American incarnation." Not an indictment, because elsewhere he expresses great hope for the individuals he meets in his Adirondack journey, but rather a gentle push for better understanding and for furthering the conversation.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

"There is a surpassing glory in our right habitation of a place..." McKibben's reflective journey on foot from VT near Middlebury to Johnville, NY across a portion of the Adirondacks. It is a less a travelogue or walking tour than a chance to meet people connected to particular places who offer small visions of alternative lives and a deep love of place. And the places he describes are glorious. He eschews sermonizing, offers several recommendations of other authors, and provides hope, despite our consumer culture's constant demand for cheaper and for more, hope that local communities might make small inroads and his deep love for the landscape he is walking across might seem less unique and startling. A lovely book of place and of the people who make place.

[Patti · Rating 5 out of 5]

"A blur not a line." It is so refreshing to read an author who admits there are trade offs in everything we do. It is important to have blocks of pure wilderness, but there is no pure isolation and the edges in all dimensions will be impacted by what is around that wilderness. Choices have to be made and impacts acknowledged and then more choices and adjustments.

This book was not just a journey of walking, it was a journey alongside people McKibben had come to know and respected. It was fascinating learning more about the Champlain Valley and the Adirondacks and those people and the blurs they are working to shape.

[Janet · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this book because it talks about some people and places I am familiar with. Mt Abraham in Vermont and Giant Mtn in the New York Adirondacks. I especially liked the descriptions of the hike. The description of the people he visited along the way was enjoyable, thought provoking,but didn't feel real to me. I read this while I was visiting Linda in Florida. It is a quick read and worth the time it takes to read it.

[Faye · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading his perspective of the people, culture, and environmental issues of Vermont and the Adirondacks. Some bits were a bit hard to follow (although this might be because I got bored of the rambling). I was hoping there would be more about the hike itself, but it was more stories about people he walked with or visited along the way.

[AJ Nolan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Found this in a thrift shop for .69 cents, and what a ridiculous bargain. A beautiful meditation on the author's walk from Vermont to the Adirondacks, weaving personal history, travel notes and environmental/sustainable land use writing all into one essay. Well worth a read.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, I'm ready to go visit the Green Mountains and the Adirondacks. Thoroughly enjoyed this book.

[Court · Rating 4 out of 5]

You probably don’t know this about me, because I don’t have the opportunity on this platform to say it often, but I’m a huge Bill McKibben fan. His books changed my life - literally - and the way I think about the Earth, sustainability, and consumerism. He is so deeply impactful and equally down to earth. I had the good fortune to meet him in 2015 when he spoke at the campus I work at, and he signed a few books for me. Needless to say, he’s one of the few “living idols” I have.

This book was very McKibben, but still a departure from his climate science/environmentalism books. As a native New Yorker, practically on the border of Vermont and living in the shadow of the mighty Adirondacks, this book was absolute perfection. Bill shared his journey “wandering” from VT to NY with us - the scenery and the people he meets along the way. He’s a natural storyteller, and I felt like I was on the hike with him.

If you’re a NY/VT enthusiast, a hiker, a lover of stories, or a fellow Bill McKibben fan, this book is a gem.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

The perfect book to read before a roadtrip and backcountry hiking to increase the odds of a spiritual revelation.
It's written like an extra-long longform essay and is stylistically reflective of it's subject: the narration is meandering, with plenty of stops to smell the roses.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received a free copy of this from the publisher via Goodreads' First-reads giveaway program, in exchange for an honest review.

In this inspirational essay that blends nature appreciation, travel, and environmental activism, Bill McKibben structures his ruminations around a walking journey he undertook from his present-day home in Vermont as professor at Middlebury College to his former home across the lake in the New York Adirondacks.

Wandering is an apt word to describe the essay, for it is not primarily about details of the actual journey, nor is it particularly about the natural features of the two neighboring regions. While both of these topics are given voice, the walking trek and its environment are really just a narrative backdrop to symbolically contain McKibben’s wandering thoughts and anecdotes. These anecdotes primarily take the form of recounted encounters with other people along McKibben’s route who embody a sort of spirit or cause that he meditates upon, as in the style of a sermon.

Personally I would have enjoyed this more if there had been greater structure to it, if there had been fuller details on the journey and the environment, or a deeper probing of the ecological, social, and political themes that the anecdotes touch upon. However, I acknowledge that isn’t what this work is meant to be, and the brief read that this essay provides is certainly inspirational. Thus, for those who do appreciate this kind of book and have a striking love of nature or environmental activism, you will enjoy it.

While I found Wandering Home to be too cursory overall, I certainly did also find moments of intense beauty and inspiration within it. McKibben’s writing is impassioned and poetic. The passages where he is detailing the environmental qualities of each region are evocative and rich. The meditative quality of the text and its wandering nature probably make this the type of book that isn’t best read in one sitting as I did, or even in the same span of general time. This is more like a resource that could be dipped into during precious reflective times, or a during a moment’s anticipation of going on a similar hike or journey.

If nothing else, Wandering Home serves as a fine, gentle reminder that other types of existence – closer to nature – are possible than the one we may be accustomed with, and perhaps we could each find ways to seek and embrace some aspect of these alternatives.

[Amory Ross · Rating 3 out of 5]

I so badly wanted to like this book. The description intrigued me when I pulled it off the shelf of The Mountaineer in Keene, NY. It was a valiant effort that simply misses the mark.

I am a fan of the return to artisinal skills. I support Etsy companies who are trying to bring back that old DIY vibe that sells to those who don't do it themselves. I love that cooperative farming gets bigger each year. I love that alternative sources of energy continue to gain traction. Many of these topics McKibben explores in his walk from Vermont to the Adirondacks in Upstate New York. And while he champions those who are looking to make the world a better place, I found it extremely difficult to ignore the fact that he's walking from his home in Vermont to a second home in the Adirondacks. Any time he would say someone is out to make a better world, I kept thinking, "Yeah, but you have two houses."

McKibben lays his opinion on thick at the start of the book talking about the small town in Vermont where people pitch in to help with the library under the shadow of newly-constructed vacation mansions. I appreciated his highlighting of this awful trend in excessiveness. As a person who regularly visits the Adirondacks and occsaionally Vermont, I turn to look away from the terrible new construction that falls under Bill Bryson's description of chain hotels: as if the architect gave a big middle finger to everyone who wants to look at it. But still. He has two houses.

I found the many people McKibben highlights in his book interesting. Oftentimes I found myself wanting more information. Those who live along Lake Champlain and inside the Blue Line are deeply passionate about their land. Some want to use it more while others want to conserve harder. We all benefit from the people who argue for both sides of the aisle.

Before I go, I do want to comment on his usage of two houses. I am quite aware that the second location varied from the first. I am conflicted as to whether McKibben might have done better with picking a different finishing point, leaving out the fact he has a second property altogether. His arguments would have reached the sticking place a little better I think. I would love to have the ability to hike the route McKibben completed and am inspired by his theme in doing so. Next time I hope he considers finishing at a brewpub in the Adirondacks so we can see him for who he really is.

[Brad VanAuken · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have spent much of my recreational time in the two places Bill McKibben writes about in this book -- The Adirondacks of New York and the Champlain Valley of Vermont. They both offer some of the most beautiful, pastoral scenery in the US. From Lake Champlain itself you can see the Green Mountains of Vermont on one side and the Adirondack Mountains of New York on the other. As Mr. KcKibben points out, while they may look similar and proximate from afar, each is quite different from the other. The Champlain Valley is more pastoral, bucolic and New England-like. The Adirondacks are much more rugged, wilderness-like and rough around the edges. Both can call to you in a way that becomes a lifetime's pursuit.

This book is an easy and short read. It is engaging, paints wonderful pictures with words and gets you to think about the tension between a simpler life closer to the natural world and modern society and progress/development. He is fair in his assessment of the joys and the struggles associated with a simpler life closer to nature. I don't know who would enjoy this book more - the person who has enjoyed this simpler life or one who can only imagine it through books like this one. I highly recommend this book for people who love this part of the world or who have thought about getting closer to the land and living a simpler life.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like McKibben more with each book of his I read. Wandering Home deals in similar themes to Deep Economy and The Comforting Whirlwind - emphasizing the need to remake human community in addition to, in order to, save the world community - but he does so here in a deeply personal, open, engaging way. The book unfolds as his long hike must have, vignettes stitched together by themes of reflection, ultimately revealing more through their continuity than any would have alone. Broadly speaking, I felt like this book showcased McKibben's abilities as a writer more than the others of his I have read so far. It is well constructed, feels true to his voice, and hangs together as a complete work.

Reading McKibben, I want to move to New England and start a permaculture food forest, a back-to-the-lander 40 years too late. And I'm not ruling it out. But it also occurs to me that that is almost exactly the wrong approach. We have to each find our way to rebuild community, work with the earth, and live modest but full lives in our own homes. Which is challenging to imagine when home is urban and suburban development in the midst of the East Coast megalopolis. Still, his books are great for prompting the essential task of considering how we live, and how we might live better.

[Lindsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been a fan of Bill McKibben for several years now, but I hadn't read anything by him lately except his columns in Orion. We bought this book when he spoke at ISU, and it was wonderful! It's really just one long, rambling essay detailing his two-week hike from his home in Vermont to his old home in the Adirondacks, and it was the perfect book for my last couple of weeks when I didn't have time to read for sustained periods of time. In addition to describing the vistas he sees and the people he hikes with, he also wrestles with many of the same issues he discusses in his column. For example, what makes a section of land "wild"--does it have to be completely empty of people? Should it be "virgin" landscape (if there really is such a thing), or can it be reclaimed land that was once clearcut or overused? What is our role in all of this? Whatever the answers, McKibben remains hopeful, yet realistic, about the future of our country's wildernesses. More than anything, reading this book made me want to explore the Adirondacks and revisit some of my favorite places out west.

[Xzs · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book just didn't reel me in as I expected it to. Perhaps McKibben is too much of an environmental activist for my tastes? The premise of this book certainly appealed to me - a long walk/hike from Vermont to the Adirondacks...I guess I was expecting the book to focus more on the mundane details of the journey itself. McKibben does write about the hiking, but I didn't feel his heart was in that part of the story; he is clearly driven by and more comfortable with discussing global warming and other environmental issues. Silly me, I should have know what to expect since I have read McKibbon's the End of Nature. In any case, the book is decent, I just wasn't in the mood for it I suppose. A passage at the very end of the book particularly resonated with me though: "And if one is truly lucky the passage from adult to corpse will go as smoothly, seem a natural shift that leaves us sad for what is no more, but not shaken. That renews our sense of the propriety of things. A blur, not a line."

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bill McKibben continues to be one of my favorite human beings on planet Earth. In this short book, Mr. McKibben chronicles a two week hike he took from his home in Ripton, VT to his former home in the Adirondacks Mountains in New York. On the way he meets with various friends who have some bit of wisdom or experience related to his musings on the question "What is a wilderness?" Few writers, in my experience, have thought so long, or so well, about what nature means, and Mr. McKibben's thoughts on our natural world have captivated me for many years.

I only get to go hiking once or twice a year now, since most of my free time is (happily) spent with my two little girls. Now that they are a bit older, I am hoping to take them for a few hikes in the town forrest, or at the Great Blue Hills Reservation. I love to hike and walk and think; it's one of my favorite things to do. Next time I go, I'm going to take Bill McKibben's ideas with me in my head and turn them over a bit, see what's what.

Good stuff from a great writer.

[Heather · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received a free copy of this from the publisher via Goodreads First Reads giveaways.
The author provides lovely descriptions of the area as well as an interesting history. I thought it was going to be more about his experience on the hike, but it ended up being more of an introduction to various environmental theories: sustainable local agriculture, letting land return to the wild, use of bees, biodiesel, etc. Each section of his hike involved him meeting up with an old friend who is in someway involved with one of these environmental theories and the whole section is really just telling you what it's all about and then plugging a book, a website or an organization. I kind of felt like it was too much of an advertisement at times.
Overall it was an interesting, short, and quick read.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is very good. It's really a long essay, not a full length work of non-fiction. But it is a fun read about walking through the woods in Vermont and New York. It really made me see that the wilderness in the Adirondacks region is very different from the wilderness in the West. With so much more vegetation, it seems more, well, wild. The West is so big and arid. But of course, the geology of the West is so much younger than that of the East.

Some of McKibben's argument about preserving wilderness seems rooted in nostalgia for times past, but he does make a good case for living in harmony with the land. As he walks from Vermont to New York, he tells the stories of the people he meets and how they have lived in conjunction with the land. This is why he calls this region "America's most hopeful landscape." This book is inspiring.

[John Benson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book I read was a re-issue of this Crown Journeys book which came out ten years earlier. In it noted environmentalist Bill McKibben walks from his current home in southwestern Vermont to his former home in the New York Adirondacks. While only 70 miles apart, from the top of the mountain by his Vermont home he can see the mountain by his New York home, McKibben wanders about 200 miles, crosses Lake Champlain, and comments on both the unity of this region but also the vast differences between the Vermont and New York sides of this lake. While he walks, he meets up with friends along the way who help him understand this landscape in deeper ways and shares their ideas with us. It is a short but very enjoyable book.

[Shawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bill McKibben walk from Ripton Vermont to Crane Mt. New York and visits a number of interesting "eco/environmental/sustainable" endeavors that folks are trying in the region, such as biodiesel, wildlife migratory track reclamation, small scale forestry and local wine making. You will hear about a guy who lives totally "off grid" and bikes or rows for transportation year round in the Adirondacks. The only thing wrong with this book is that it is only 157 pages long and it left me wanting to hear so much more about this area of the country that I love so much.

[Isaac Jensen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I ended up liking this book more than I expected, given that I wasn’t a big fan of the conceit at the heart of The End of Nature. McKibben is a talented writer and passionate thinker. But ultimately, it feels like a bit of a fantasy, lionizing as the solution to our environmental ills prescriptions that will only function in small, wealthy places.

[Jillian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I greatly enjoyed this book, but I might be biased because he tramps through many of my old stomping grounds. Rather than discovering the exquisite Vermont/New York landscapes later in life, I grew up among them.

[Kathie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. The Adirondacks and Vermont have a special place in my heart. McKibben captures the essence of the region - it made me homesick. Friends who wants to know why I pine for the Adirondacks and Vermont so much should read this book.

[Lisa]

Excellent read. I have read a number of McKibben's books now and though he is very adament in his politics he is not preachy..For a rather vocal environmentalist and activist..he writes beautifully and there are snatches of lovely prose in this book of his wanderings.

[Mark Lacy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disappointing. Too much environmentalism-related talk (what else would you expect from McKibben!), not enough about the surroundings he was walking through. I've been through this area myself, and I just couldn't picture it from his descriptions.