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.Rubin, Robert Alden is the author of 'On the Beaten Path An Appalachian Pilgrimage' with ISBN 9781585743971 and ISBN 1585743976.