On the Beaten Path: An Appalachian Pilgrimage

Of the "thruhikers" who set out to walk the entire Appalachian Trail, about one in every ten actually makes it. Robert Rubin's chances did not look good. Thirty-eight years old, dispirited, and burned out by a job he'd once loved, he dreamed of leaving mortgage and wife and cul-de-sac life behind for a journey that could take half a year - or perhaps never end. On the wooded ridges Rubin found himself part of a strange vagrant culture of pilgrims and dropouts, a world with its own rules and rituals. With eloquence and humor, he recounts his trek - the people he met, the landscapes he passed through, the spiritual and physical endurance involved (despite a diet heavy in Snickers bars and macaroni & cheese, he lost seventy-five pounds along the way). On the Beaten Path is a wise, witty look at one of the few remaining pilgrimages in our ironic disillusioned age.Robert Alden Rubin is the author of 'On the Beaten Path: An Appalachian Pilgrimage', published 2000 under ISBN 9781585740239 and ISBN 1585740233.