Welcome to my fifth annual winter reading list!
Each winter, I recommend a few outdoor-related books to keep my friends motivated for the upcoming hiking season. As an avid reader, I enjoy fiction, non-fiction, memoirs, and just about everything in between. Yet nothing quite gets my spirits up during the dark and gloomy winters like an inspiring book set in the backcountry.
Following along other people’s journeys as they wander outdoor gets my motivation going for the upcoming adventure season. Here’s a few great reads I enjoyed the past few months to get you started down that road.
If you’re interested in even more outdoor book ideas, head down to the end of this post, where I also have links to my prior winter reading lists.
WINTER 2022 READING LIST
#1 – What we owe to ourselves
When I read Nic Antoinette’s first book, How to be Alone, set during her 2017 Arizona Trail thru-hike, I was simply blown away by her writing style. Her ability to showcase the good, the bad, and the ugly of long-distance backpacking resonated deeply with me. But mostly, I was hooked by how honest and transparent she was willing to be with her readers. So, when she announced a new book about her journey on the Colorado Trail in August 2021, I was all in. This sophomore book is shorter than the first, at only 110 pages, but it’s packed with all the same great writing and internal exploration that I’ve come to expect from her. This time around, she’s grappling with the effects of the pandemic, grieving her divorce, and falling in love with a new partner. She also spends time struggling with the hard question of whether it’s ok for her not to want all the same milestones or traditional life choices that all her peers seems to be making (i.e., marriage, kids, buying a house)? As with her first book, a digital version of What We Owe Ourselves is available on her website where she allows readers to name their own price when purchasing it. And 10% of the book’s proceeds are donated the Indigenous Environmental Network, a grassroots organization created by indigenous people to help protect sacred tribal sites, land, and resources.
#2 – My year of Running Dangerously
Tom Foreman’s memoir about the year he decided to detour into ultra-running was a delightful departure from most of the trail-related books I tend to consume. Foreman’s passion for running began in his youth, continued through high school and college, but then it slowly took the back burner as the demands of life, family, and work grew. However, that all changes when Foreman’s college-age daughter announces her desire to run a marathon and ropes him into her New Year’s resolution training plan. What starts out as a simple goal to complete the marathon (if one can ever call running 26.2 miles simple) grows into bigger and bigger ambitions, and a few hilarious mishaps along the way. As a professional journalist, Foreman’s his ability to tell a captivating story comes naturally and readers will find the pages simply fly by. My Year of Running Dangerously is one book I strongly recommend enjoying as an audiobook, as the author reads it himself with perfect blend of wit and wry self-deprecation. If you’re looking for some inspiration for your own New Year’s fitness goals or an audio companion on your next long training run, this book will not disappoint.
#3 – Life on the Mississippi: An Epic American Adventure
Two of my all time favorite books are Mark Twain’s novel Huckleberry Finn, and Rinker Buck’s memoir, The Oregon Trail (detailing his adventure of driving a team of mules and covered wagon across the 2,000-mile Oregon Trail). So it’s probably no surprise that I that Life on the Mississippi would end up on my bookshelf. This memoir follows Buck on his most recent adventure as he builds himself a 19th century-style wooden flatboat and sets sail down the Mississippi River toward New Orleans. His ability to blend American history with his modern day re-creation of the voyage is about more than just the adventure on North America’s longest river. Buck takes readers on an engaging journey about the travails of land settlement in the U.S, the Indian Removal Act of 1830, and the role this grand river plays in our our legacy of slavery. Life on the Mississippi is a book that appeals to the cross-section of history buffs and outdoor enthusiasts who dream of a big adventure to fill their days.
#4 – Adrift on the pacific crest Trail
America’s long-distance hiking trails are filled with lots of young hikers in their 20s or retirees in their late 60s. But so few hiking memoirs are written by hikers squarely in middle age. Thus, I was intrigued by Clay Bonneyman Evan’s recent book about his thru-hike on the Pacific Crest Trail. I genuinely enjoyed the majority of Adrift on the Pacific Crest Trail, especially when the author revealed some of his insecurities about being slower than other hikers, searching for a trail family bond with people decades younger than himself, and struggling with missing his spouse (who is doing her best to support his hike from afar). The author’s description of the trail itself made me want to head out to the PCT immediately and start walking north. However, when Evans dropped a personal bombshell during the final three pages of this book, it left me feeling blindsided and conflicted. He had a strong cautionary tale to share about what happens when we leave our ‘real’ lives behind for months at a time. However, I felt like he needed to weave his big revelation into his narrative much earlier to make it a true theme of this book – rather leaving it as an afterthought or sensational confession.
#5 – UP IN ARMS
Up in Arms in one of several recent books written about the armed standoff between the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and Cliven Bundy’s family in their clash over public lands. I already knew the thumbnail sketch of the Bundy conflict — the BLM adjusted cattle grazing permits in Nevada in order to protect natural habitat for the desert tortoise, but Bundy protested the action by refusing to move his cattle or pay his grazing fees. Yet, I still wasn’t sure how this 2014 stand-off in the Nevada desert led to assorted militia groups occupying the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in southern Oregon two years later. Was this a growing grassroots movement against public land management? Or just one rabble-rousing family? And what stake did the Oath Keepers and other militia groups have in this fight? After watching the PBS Frontline documentary, American Patriot, I read a trio of excellent books on the Federal Government’s role managing public lands in the West, including: Up in Arms: How the Bundy Family Hijacked Public Lands, Outfoxed the Federal Government, and Ignited America’s Patriot Militia Movement (by John Temple); Chosen Country: A Rebellion in the West (by James Pogue); and American Zion: Cliven Bundy, God, & Public Lands in the West (by Betsy Gaines Quammen). If you have strong feelings about how our public lands are (or are not) being managed and protected, these three of these books provide great insight into this powder-keg issue.
Thx!