WALKING TO VERMONT

By Christopher S. Wren

Book Overview

A distinguished former foreign correspondent embraces retirement by setting out alone on foot for nearly four hundred miles, and explores a side of America nearly as exotic as the locales from which he once filed. Traveling with an unwieldy pack and a keen curiosity, Christopher Wren bids farewell to the New York Times newsroom in midtown Manhattan and saunters up Broadway, through Harlem, the Bronx, and the affluent New York suburbs of Westchester and Putnam Counties. As his trek takes him into the Housatonic River Valley of Connecticut, the Berkshires of Massachusetts, the Green Mountains of Vermont, and along a bucolic riverbank in New Hampshire, the strenuous challenges become as much emotional as physical. Wren loses his way in a suburban thicket of million-dollar mansions, dodges speeding motorists, seeks serenity at a convent, shivers through a rainy night among Shaker ruins, camps in a stranger's backyard, panhandles cookies and water from a good samaritan, absorbs the lore of the Appalachian and Long Trails, sweats up and down mountains, and lands in a hospital emergency room. Struggling under the weight of a fifty-pound pack, he gripes, "We might grow less addicted to stuff if everything we bought had to be carried on our backs." He hangs out with fellow wanderers named Old Rabbit, Flash, Gatorman, Stray Dog, and Buzzard, and learns gratitude from the anonymous charity of trail angels. His rite of passage into retirement, with its heat and dust and blisters galore, evokes vivid reminiscences of earlier risks taken, sometimes at gunpoint, during his years spent reporting from Russia, China, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, South America, and Africa. He loses track of time, waking with the sun, stopping to eat when hunger gnaws, and camping under starry skies that transform the nights of solitude. For all the self-inflicted hardship, he reports, "In fact, I felt pretty good." Wren has woven an intensely personal story that is candid and often downright hilarious. As Vermont turns from a destination into a state of mind, he concludes, "I had stumbled upon the secret of how utterly irrelevant chronological age is." This book, from the author of the acclaimed bestseller The Cat Who Covered the World, will delight not just hikers, walkers, and other lovers of the outdoors, but also anyone who contemplates retirement, wonders about foreign correspondents, or relishes a lively, off-beat adventure, even when it unfolds close to home.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0743251520
• ISBN13: 9780743251525
• Release Date: February 2004
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 273 Pages
• Weight: 0.92 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.0" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

No denial here, it's a good read!

I have yet to hike the Appalachian trail, and I'm only 41, but I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The author has some wisdom well worth sharing, as well as a very candid view of his experience. I didn't feel he was in denial at all. Rather, he was realizing that 65 isn't so old, after all. This book is about the physical AND emotional journey into retirement. If you are interested in human nature as well as mother nature,...

Worthy Addition

"Walking to Vermont" is a worthy addition to anyone who collects, reads, and enjoys books on the culture of walking. I especially enjoyed it because it is also a worthy addition to literature related to the Appalachian Trail, and sits on my bookshelf besides Bryson's "A Walk in the Woods", Emblidge's "Appalachian Trail Reader" and Hall's "A Journey North." This is not a book of discovery -- Mr. Wren knows who he is and is...

Not over the hill yet

A good book for those who are interested in nature, human and otherwise. At age 65, this New York Times foreign correspondent walks out of the Times building and just keeps on walking. Four hundred miles and five weeks later, he is at home in Vermont. This book chronicles the ups and downs, humanly and geographically, as he hoofs his way on New York city streets, over highways, under bridges, through towns and villages,...

The begining of life

Living the vicinty of NYC, i am always amazed at the people i see every day. It has been a dream of mine to conquer the AT. But for a man in retirement, to due such a venture, is an inspiration. The authors ability to bring his past ventures in to simular standing is also a great asset to the books adventures. We all want to know how it comes about.

An Appalachian Odyssey

How many of us have had fantasies of walking away from the life we've known into a cleansing wilderness and emerging, at the end of the ordeal, renewed? Christopher S. Wren, former New York Times correspondent did just that. Upon retirement, he strode out of New York City and made his way to his home in Vermont via the meandering Appalachian Trail. Along the way, he kept company with a motley crew of other travelers, ominous...