What do you think?
Rate this book
Almost Anywhere: Road Trip Ruminations on Love, Nature, National Parks, and Nonsense
At twenty-eight years old, Krista Schlyer sold almost everything she owned and packed the rest of it in a station wagon bound for the American wild. Her two best friends joined her—one a grumpy, grieving introvert, the other a feisty dog—and together they sought out every national park, historic site, forest, and wilderness they could get to before their money ran out or their minds gave in.
The journey began as a desperate escape from urban isolation, heartbreak, and despair, but became an adventure beyond imagining. Chronicling their colorful escapade, Almost Anywhere explores the courage, cowardice, and heroics that live in all of us, as well as the life of nature and the nature of life.
This eloquent and accessible memoir is at once an immersion in the pain of losing someone particularly close and especially young and a healing journey of a broken life given over to the whimsy and humor of living on the road.
Almost Anywhere will appeal to outdoor lovers, armchair travelers, and anyone struggling to find a way forward in life.
Early Reviews:
“Outstanding, wry, heart-wrenching and healing. Those words describe Almost Anywhere, which hits the bull’s-eye as a cross between Wild and Let’s Pretend This Never Happened. Krista’s unique voice will draw you in and take you on journey to the intersection of unfathomable grief and the healing power of wanderlust.” —Michelle Theall, author of Teaching the Cat to Sit
"Brave, beautiful, and utterly captivating, Almost Anywhere breaks your heart and puts it back together again on a long and often arduous road trip across an America where the uncertain future is always just beyond the horizon and the immutable past rushes at you without remorse. Measuring the sharpness of loss against the hugeness of life, Krista Schlyer has found her way, page by page, to a rare state of grace. An amazing book." –William Souder, author of Under a Wild Sky, A Plague of Frogs and On a Farther Shore.
The journey began as a desperate escape from urban isolation, heartbreak, and despair, but became an adventure beyond imagining. Chronicling their colorful escapade, Almost Anywhere explores the courage, cowardice, and heroics that live in all of us, as well as the life of nature and the nature of life.
This eloquent and accessible memoir is at once an immersion in the pain of losing someone particularly close and especially young and a healing journey of a broken life given over to the whimsy and humor of living on the road.
Almost Anywhere will appeal to outdoor lovers, armchair travelers, and anyone struggling to find a way forward in life.
Early Reviews:
“Outstanding, wry, heart-wrenching and healing. Those words describe Almost Anywhere, which hits the bull’s-eye as a cross between Wild and Let’s Pretend This Never Happened. Krista’s unique voice will draw you in and take you on journey to the intersection of unfathomable grief and the healing power of wanderlust.” —Michelle Theall, author of Teaching the Cat to Sit
"Brave, beautiful, and utterly captivating, Almost Anywhere breaks your heart and puts it back together again on a long and often arduous road trip across an America where the uncertain future is always just beyond the horizon and the immutable past rushes at you without remorse. Measuring the sharpness of loss against the hugeness of life, Krista Schlyer has found her way, page by page, to a rare state of grace. An amazing book." –William Souder, author of Under a Wild Sky, A Plague of Frogs and On a Farther Shore.
467 people are currently reading
1695 people want to read
About the author
Krista Schlyer
5 books38 followersKrista Schlyer is a conservation photographer and writer. She is a senior fellow in the International League of Conservation Photographers and her work has been published by BBC, The Nature Conservancy, High Country News, The National Geographic Society, and Audubon. Schlyer is the author of two previous books including Continental Divide, winner of the 2013 National Outdoor Book Award. She is also the 2014 recipient of the Sierra Club’s Ansel Adams Award for Conservation Photography and the 2015 Vision Award from the North American Nature Photographers Association. She resides in Washington, D.C.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 13 of 91 reviews
September 21, 2015
Deep love. Deep loss. In the fog of pain, Krista Schlyer struggles to see her way forward. Seeking solace where trees tower, buffalo roam, and mountains humble, Schlyer faces and embraces life, warts and all, with sobs, smiles, and a quirky little dog.
November 14, 2015
“Over the years, I have learned to find sustenance where there is scarcity,” photojournalist Krista Schlyer writes in Almost Anywhere. “In the bend of dune grass under an ocean breeze. A solid rock for luncheon rest on a sunny peak. The wings of a heron reflected in low flight over the Anacostia River.” In these and more, Schlyer has discovered what it means to walk the tenuous line between exquisite joy and mind-numbing pain. As her readers, we are invited to join her on that precarious walk.
It is tempting to draw comparisons here—say, with John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley, written more than 50 years ago. Each is an account of a yearlong road trip in search of an intangible something— in his case, the American character; in hers, a kind of serenity that only “this grand, graceful Earth can give.”
Instead of Charley the standard poodle, however, Schlyer travels with a “big-eared furry runt of a dog” named Maggie and a curmudgeonly friend named Bill. Also unlike Steinbeck, who allegedly fabricated many of his encounters with colorful strangers, Schlyer does indeed meet a number of eccentric types, including a naked old man near a hot spring in Utah. And whereas Steinbeck only talked about camping in national parks along the way, Schlyer and her companions actually do so—in deserts and mountain forests, amid swarms of mosquitos and in the company of loons. Only on those rare occasions when she can convince Bill to loosen his grip on the purse strings do they deign to stay in a motel. This is, after all, a pilgrimage, not a relaxing vacation.
Just as Schlyer’s journey takes her across the breadth of the country, it also takes her through an emotional and spiritual landscape fraught with extremes—awe in the presence of great beauty, desolation in the wake of great loss. Daniel, the love of her life, has died, and Krista must learn how to carry on. Similarly adrift, Bill must reorient himself; in losing Daniel, he has lost his best friend. Having sold most of their possessions, pooled their money, and bought a car, Krista and Bill set out on the road toward healing, and in the process, sort out their own relationship and set a new course. Maggie just goes along for the ride.
Almost Anywhere: Road Trip Ruminations on Love, Nature, National Parks, and Nonsense is everything the title suggests. Fifteen years in the making, this memoir is at the same time lyrical and plainspoken, laugh-out-loud funny and wise. Deeply moving in places, it rings true for anyone who has ever experienced profound grief. It also stirs the wanderlust in us all, that desire to explore, to get in the car and go.
More than anything, though, Schlyer reminds us of what the natural world can teach us, not just about finitude and loss, about the cycle of which we’re a part, but also about grace.
It is while standing a mere 15 feet from a herd of bison in Yellowstone National Park that Schlyer sees where this trip has been taking her. She is afraid at first, and she should be; at 500 pounds apiece, this herd could kill her in an instant. When she shifts her position between the bison and the river, they shift as well. “I can either think my way out of such close proximity to these giants or draw a halt to my rising panic,” she writes. She chooses the latter.
Schlyer’s epiphany comes when the herd simply ignores her as they make their way to the river. “I am nothing to them,” she realizes, “a moth, a varmint, beneath notice. But they have given me back my life, pressed paddles to my heart and (clear!) drummed me with electric shock. I have not been so alive for years, perhaps never.”
Although she will continue to carry the wound of Daniel’s loss, Schlyer has also been given a gift: the knowledge that, like this remnant herd of bison, grazing as bison have done for eons, she, too, can carry on. In being ignored by the brute power of the universe, she has gained “liberation from self-pity.”
Later, Schlyer is able to put words to this experience. It was at that moment, she explains, that she discovered her vocation for speaking for the natural world. “If the bison can hold on and hold fast to his work on the landscape until the landscape itself is returned to him,” she observes, “then maybe I can rebound from hopelessness by helping him try to get there—however I can.”
Fortunately for her readers, Schlyer has made good on this promise, giving us a remarkable body of work in her photographs and words.
It is tempting to draw comparisons here—say, with John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley, written more than 50 years ago. Each is an account of a yearlong road trip in search of an intangible something— in his case, the American character; in hers, a kind of serenity that only “this grand, graceful Earth can give.”
Instead of Charley the standard poodle, however, Schlyer travels with a “big-eared furry runt of a dog” named Maggie and a curmudgeonly friend named Bill. Also unlike Steinbeck, who allegedly fabricated many of his encounters with colorful strangers, Schlyer does indeed meet a number of eccentric types, including a naked old man near a hot spring in Utah. And whereas Steinbeck only talked about camping in national parks along the way, Schlyer and her companions actually do so—in deserts and mountain forests, amid swarms of mosquitos and in the company of loons. Only on those rare occasions when she can convince Bill to loosen his grip on the purse strings do they deign to stay in a motel. This is, after all, a pilgrimage, not a relaxing vacation.
Just as Schlyer’s journey takes her across the breadth of the country, it also takes her through an emotional and spiritual landscape fraught with extremes—awe in the presence of great beauty, desolation in the wake of great loss. Daniel, the love of her life, has died, and Krista must learn how to carry on. Similarly adrift, Bill must reorient himself; in losing Daniel, he has lost his best friend. Having sold most of their possessions, pooled their money, and bought a car, Krista and Bill set out on the road toward healing, and in the process, sort out their own relationship and set a new course. Maggie just goes along for the ride.
Almost Anywhere: Road Trip Ruminations on Love, Nature, National Parks, and Nonsense is everything the title suggests. Fifteen years in the making, this memoir is at the same time lyrical and plainspoken, laugh-out-loud funny and wise. Deeply moving in places, it rings true for anyone who has ever experienced profound grief. It also stirs the wanderlust in us all, that desire to explore, to get in the car and go.
More than anything, though, Schlyer reminds us of what the natural world can teach us, not just about finitude and loss, about the cycle of which we’re a part, but also about grace.
It is while standing a mere 15 feet from a herd of bison in Yellowstone National Park that Schlyer sees where this trip has been taking her. She is afraid at first, and she should be; at 500 pounds apiece, this herd could kill her in an instant. When she shifts her position between the bison and the river, they shift as well. “I can either think my way out of such close proximity to these giants or draw a halt to my rising panic,” she writes. She chooses the latter.
Schlyer’s epiphany comes when the herd simply ignores her as they make their way to the river. “I am nothing to them,” she realizes, “a moth, a varmint, beneath notice. But they have given me back my life, pressed paddles to my heart and (clear!) drummed me with electric shock. I have not been so alive for years, perhaps never.”
Although she will continue to carry the wound of Daniel’s loss, Schlyer has also been given a gift: the knowledge that, like this remnant herd of bison, grazing as bison have done for eons, she, too, can carry on. In being ignored by the brute power of the universe, she has gained “liberation from self-pity.”
Later, Schlyer is able to put words to this experience. It was at that moment, she explains, that she discovered her vocation for speaking for the natural world. “If the bison can hold on and hold fast to his work on the landscape until the landscape itself is returned to him,” she observes, “then maybe I can rebound from hopelessness by helping him try to get there—however I can.”
Fortunately for her readers, Schlyer has made good on this promise, giving us a remarkable body of work in her photographs and words.
October 24, 2015
In this funny, heartbreaking, and ultimately redemptive memoir, Krista Schlyer invites her readers on a cross-country journey from loss to hope. Along the way, she guides us through dozens of America's state and national parks and introduces us to the many species whose land we've come to occupy. Schlyer's writing is warm and witty; self-effacing and honest, she's the kind of writer and narrator a reader connects with easily, even if many of us have never faced the trials that inspired her trip.
The real triumph of the book, though, is the way Schlyer traces the birth of her own environmental consciousness. We see bison, seals, and giant, giant trees nudging back to life and helping her discover the possibility of love and life after death; only by helping save the natural world can she imagine moving forward. Her regard for nature not only inspires, it also makes a great story.
The real triumph of the book, though, is the way Schlyer traces the birth of her own environmental consciousness. We see bison, seals, and giant, giant trees nudging back to life and helping her discover the possibility of love and life after death; only by helping save the natural world can she imagine moving forward. Her regard for nature not only inspires, it also makes a great story.
December 31, 2015
Award-winning photojournalist and wilderness advocate Krista Schlyer was 28 years old, living in Washington, DC, and stuck in a disabling fog of grief after losing her husband to cancer when her best friend Bill—also her late husband's best friend—phoned and said, "We both need to get out of here. Way out."
He thought we should go out on the road, to all those national parks and wild lands, as many as we could get to for as long as we could manage to stay away. We'd go by car, sleep in a tent, eat cheap noodles and canned beans, whatever it took.
So the two bought a used Saturn station wagon (because it got good gas mileage and they could sleep in the back in a pinch), sold their respective belongings, and hit the road. With them they took Maggie, Schlyer's Corgi-Dachshund cross, the "cutest dog on the planet," who possessed a master nose for expensive cheese and an ability to charm anyone, even Bill.
Almost Anywhere, Schlyer's memoir of that year spent searching for "a place to be both broken and whole at the same time," is a wry and lyrical contribution to the classic American literature of road-trip stories. It is a portrait of numbing grief gradually thawed by moments of heart-stopping beauty: the eerie call of a loon from a north-country lake; the passage of a herd of bison almost close enough to touch, the huge animals supremely unfazed by human presence.
What lifts this tale above other journey stories is Schlyer's combination of honesty and humor, her ability to shift seamlessly from the grandeur of the places they visit to the mundane struggles of two humans with serious emotional baggage dealing with the less glamorous aspects of exploring America's wild places, from clouds of voracious mosquitoes to the chipmunk who stows away with them.
How could any reader resist a story that pins you through the heart with its exquisite truths and also leaves you rolling on the floor laughing? Almost Anywhere is not perfect, but it is a great read.
Excerpted from Story Circle Book Reviews (a featured Editor's Choice review): http://www.storycirclebookreviews.org...
He thought we should go out on the road, to all those national parks and wild lands, as many as we could get to for as long as we could manage to stay away. We'd go by car, sleep in a tent, eat cheap noodles and canned beans, whatever it took.
So the two bought a used Saturn station wagon (because it got good gas mileage and they could sleep in the back in a pinch), sold their respective belongings, and hit the road. With them they took Maggie, Schlyer's Corgi-Dachshund cross, the "cutest dog on the planet," who possessed a master nose for expensive cheese and an ability to charm anyone, even Bill.
Almost Anywhere, Schlyer's memoir of that year spent searching for "a place to be both broken and whole at the same time," is a wry and lyrical contribution to the classic American literature of road-trip stories. It is a portrait of numbing grief gradually thawed by moments of heart-stopping beauty: the eerie call of a loon from a north-country lake; the passage of a herd of bison almost close enough to touch, the huge animals supremely unfazed by human presence.
What lifts this tale above other journey stories is Schlyer's combination of honesty and humor, her ability to shift seamlessly from the grandeur of the places they visit to the mundane struggles of two humans with serious emotional baggage dealing with the less glamorous aspects of exploring America's wild places, from clouds of voracious mosquitoes to the chipmunk who stows away with them.
How could any reader resist a story that pins you through the heart with its exquisite truths and also leaves you rolling on the floor laughing? Almost Anywhere is not perfect, but it is a great read.
Excerpted from Story Circle Book Reviews (a featured Editor's Choice review): http://www.storycirclebookreviews.org...
March 2, 2016
This is the best memoir I have ever read. Most memoirs/autobiographies, understandably, have a "this is all about me!" feel to them, but I never felt that about this book. Schlyer is simply a guide to her experiences on the road, switching beautifully from funny to profound to informative.
Grief is difficult to write about, but Schlyer rocks it. I feel like I took this journey with her, from the crushing weight of losing someone you love to realizing that, yes, grief is huge, but life is bigger. This isn't so much a book about adventures as a portrayal of life, and finding a way to live it. And Schlyer does it in an intelligent but humble way.
And of course you can't have great literature without great characters. It's impossible not to love Krista, Daniel, Bill, and Maggie. The book does get a bit environmentalist at the end, but that's just a small complaint about a book I really, really loved.
Grief is difficult to write about, but Schlyer rocks it. I feel like I took this journey with her, from the crushing weight of losing someone you love to realizing that, yes, grief is huge, but life is bigger. This isn't so much a book about adventures as a portrayal of life, and finding a way to live it. And Schlyer does it in an intelligent but humble way.
And of course you can't have great literature without great characters. It's impossible not to love Krista, Daniel, Bill, and Maggie. The book does get a bit environmentalist at the end, but that's just a small complaint about a book I really, really loved.
October 14, 2015
Almost Anywhere is astonishingly lyrical, gut-bustingly funny, and tremendously moving. It's a reminder of the healing, transformative power of nature. If you've never felt the numinous astonishment of walking in a wood with no human sounds but your own footsteps, this book will give you that vicarious experience from your armchair. But more than that - it will inspire you to seek out your own paths into places full of beauty.
Oh,and it's full of beautiful scenes from some of the best parts of the U.S. Krista Schlyer takes us there on her own personal journey of healing, of mourning and finding love. Travel with her - you won't regret it.
Oh,and it's full of beautiful scenes from some of the best parts of the U.S. Krista Schlyer takes us there on her own personal journey of healing, of mourning and finding love. Travel with her - you won't regret it.
June 12, 2016
The most insightful books always seem to come at exactly the right time. One thing that they all share in common is a powerful mix of personal narrative, humor, and the kind of deep thinking that speaks to me not only while I’m burning through their pages, but for the days and weeks that follow. Almost Anywhere will take you on an unforgettable journey through America’s National Parks—some more familiar than others—and deep within the landscape of beautiful lives touched by wonder, tragedy, and ultimately redemption.
January 7, 2022
There was a lot I related to in this book. The author and I embarked on somewhat similar road trips in 2001: Traveling cheap in a small car, sleeping in rest areas, visiting every national park along the way, and yes, bickering with the man whom I would form a long-term relationship following the trip. When I learned she was 10 years older than I was at the time (I was 21, she was 31) I was surprised. Her perspectives struck me as those of a young adult just striking out in the world. The humor at times felt somewhat forced, but there were several laugh-out-loud moments.
I appreciated her raw honesty about grief, but this theme eventually faded behind a drawn-out travelogue. It took me a while to get through this book, as I admittedly lost interest in the second half. Still, it is an enjoyable read. The author writes beautifully, although the nature writing often becomes bogged down in forced metaphors.
I appreciated her raw honesty about grief, but this theme eventually faded behind a drawn-out travelogue. It took me a while to get through this book, as I admittedly lost interest in the second half. Still, it is an enjoyable read. The author writes beautifully, although the nature writing often becomes bogged down in forced metaphors.
February 21, 2019
Gratifying
Have made it known that for my memorial- whenever that comes to be -to be read aloud :
“If you seek to experience the sublime in life,the force of a beauty so terrible and powerful it tends your souls a weeping wound and then a cataclysmic giggle, you have to be willing to walk where the wild things are, in the stillness between light and dark, between pain and comfort, between life and death.
It is there, where neither force devours the other that the amber glow of dusk rests upon this world. If only for a moment.”
This young lady has a true gift of knowing the human heart’s longing and fears and happiness in the midst of pain.
Have made it known that for my memorial- whenever that comes to be -to be read aloud :
“If you seek to experience the sublime in life,the force of a beauty so terrible and powerful it tends your souls a weeping wound and then a cataclysmic giggle, you have to be willing to walk where the wild things are, in the stillness between light and dark, between pain and comfort, between life and death.
It is there, where neither force devours the other that the amber glow of dusk rests upon this world. If only for a moment.”
This young lady has a true gift of knowing the human heart’s longing and fears and happiness in the midst of pain.
October 8, 2015
The author's unique insights (related to herself and her beloveds, her journey from despair to hope, her understanding of nature and the universe), are all presented in a style that is honest, beautiful and highly relatable.
When a book can cause one to laugh out loud, to be blinded by tears, and to come away with a better understanding of one's place in the scheme of things, it's well worth reading more than once, and maybe in a book club.
I wish everyone who has been significant to me in my life, everyone I care about, could read this book and keep it nearby to reread from time to time as needed.
When a book can cause one to laugh out loud, to be blinded by tears, and to come away with a better understanding of one's place in the scheme of things, it's well worth reading more than once, and maybe in a book club.
I wish everyone who has been significant to me in my life, everyone I care about, could read this book and keep it nearby to reread from time to time as needed.
November 11, 2015
A captivating read, serious, funny and entertaining. Krista Schlyer's "Almost Anywhere" is a probing journey book that combines the personal (a journey through loss and grief) with the public - in this case, with a focus on natural history and the environment; the mapping is both internal/psychic and geographic. The book also artfully balances reverence for nature and the seriousness of grief with absurdity, irreverence and laugh-aloud humor, as often as not aimed by the author at herself. Her very three-dimensional travel companions, Bill and Maggie, add enormously to the book's vitality. A wonderful new contribution by an important conservation photographer, writer, and speaker.
February 7, 2017
Not what I expected. I liked the parts about the people they met along the way and descriptions of places they went. I definitely could have done without the long, emotional stuff (I get that it was a book about her healing but some of those passages just went on way too long for me), her ideas on religion (or lack thereof), and her profanity, etc. I found myself annoyed at times. Would not recommend.
April 25, 2018
This book has it all, the unbearable sadness of losing your life partner, the joy and hardships of the road, the redemptive power of love, friendship, humor, nature and the devotion of a great dog. Great read.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 91 reviews