"Life List"

As I plan my own little adventure later this month (here are 10 clues to figure out where I am going), I am awestruck with a book that I just finished about Phoebe Snetsinger. The book is “Life List” by Olivia Gentile, and I highly recommend it. It is a fascinating and well-written read about an truly amazing, if obsessed, woman.

Who was Phoebe Snetsinger? Well, only the first person known to have seen 8,000 of the world’s bird species. In fact, she ended up seeing something like 8,700 different species. And this was after first getting interested in birds at age 33 when she was shown a Blackburnian warbler by a friend. Along the way, she traveled all over the world, trekked to the most remote and difficult places one can imagine, saw incredible things and thousands of beautiful birds, endured inconceivable hardships, and experienced a few truly horrific things. She also lived for something like 18 years after being told that she would be dead in less than a year from melanoma, and she virtually walked away from her marriage. For most years after her diagnosis, she ended up traveling to see birds five to seven months of each year.

If you have any interest in birds and the natural world, and in the human spirit, I’d encourage you to read this excellent book.

The Bookstore

I know that this blog is about hiking, not books, but every now and then, I decide to stray off topic - writers prerogative, I guess.  Today is one of those days.

The other day, I made an impulse buy while browsing a little downtown bookstore on my lunch hour.  I was looking for a Christmas gift, and found a great cookbook in the Fountain Bookstore.  It was $35, and I knew it might be a little less on-line, but it was right there in front of me, and I like supporting local businesses.  The lady even gift wrapped it for me.  I am a terrible wrapper.  Sometimes for Team in Training, we do fundraisers where we wrap purchases at stores.  I joke that the stores donate to my fundraising with the agreement that I stay away from them.

A few days later, I decided to get the same book as a gift for someone else, and found that it was $22, plus shipping, on Amazon.  On a whim, I went back to the bookstore the next day and asked if they could cut a deal, take a few bucks off.  The lady seemed a little frustrated.  She told me that she simply could not, that she was barely making it (she was the owner).  I told her that the same book was $13 less on Amazon.  She said "I hear that every day.  You have to decide what to do."  She told me how frustrating it is when people come in, browse the books to see what they like, and then order it on line.  After thinking for a few minutes, I bought the book, plus another book for myself about odd animal friendships.

It's not that I want to hand someone $13 more of my hard earned money.  But I think it is sad to contemplate a world without little local bookstores, and that is very possible.  First it was the big bookstores that were putting them out of business, then it was the big on-line eBusiness organizations that started putting the big bookstores, like Borders, out of business.  It's clear that without customers, places like the Fountain Bookstore are endangered.  And it is clear that customers will have to pay more for merchandise at small bookstores, which just don't have the volume to compete on price.

So, given the choice, this time I choose to spend more for the exact same product, but keep some money in the local economy.  What would you have done?

North Georgia Hikes? Really?

No, I am not hiking in Georgia right now.  I've never hiked in Georgia.  Not yet!  So, let me explain....

At work, we are having our annual Charitable Virginia Campaign to raise lots of money for all kinds of worthy causes.  I always donate by payroll deduction, but there are also many fundraisers, and my division often does a used book sale.  I need more books like I need 10 more pairs of used running shoes, but in the afternoon yesterday, I finally had a break from a very busy week at work to check it out.  And lo and behold, prices were slashed in half - just 50 cents for paperbacks and a buck for a hardback!  The first thing I saw was a paperback entitled "50 Hikes in the North Georgia Mountains" by noted outdoor author Johnny Molloy.  I read an article about him over the weekend that said he spent more than 200 nights outdoors so far this year.  Oh, and his girlfriend just broke up with him!  Coincidence?

Anyhow, I live hundreds of miles from the mountains of North Georgia, but for 50 cents - just a penny a hike - how could I not buy this book?  After all, I could win the lottery and quit working.  Or maybe I will retire some day (year, decade, century) and have a lot more time to hike.  So I bought it!  I'd like to hike in Georgia someday, and I bet after reading this book, I'll really want to.

It got me wondering: how many of the 50 states have I hiked in?  So I added them up.  I only counted states where I have done at least one real hike - not a stroll in a city or a footrace - of at least a few miles.  Here is what I came up with:

Maine
Massachusetts
New Hampshire
Vermont
New York
Pennsylvania
Virginia
North Carolina
Florida
Michigan
Utah
Arizona
Washington
Alaska
Montana
Wyoming

16 states: almost one third of them - not too bad.  I was tempted to count California, because I hiked once in Muir Woods, but it was only a mile or so.  And with all the great places to hike in the Golden State, that can't really seem to count.  It would be cool to hike in all 50.  I think I need to set a goal to hike in at least one new state next year.

In the meantime, now I can read all about hiking in the Georgia Mountains.  If I win that lottery or get that retirement check, I'll have to head down that way and take a hike.  After all, I don't want to waste my 50 cents!

How many states have you hiked in? Take my poll!

Book Review: Planet Backpacker

Do you ever dream of taking a big chunk of time, say six to twelve months, and seeing a bit of the world? Does it seem like an impossible dream? Well, a guy named Robert Downes from Traverse City, Michigan had that dream all his life, and in 2007, he made it a reality. As he traveled through Ireland, England, Western and Eastern Europe, Egypt, India, Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia, he posted blog accounts of his trip from about 100 internet cafes. His trip took over four months, and he had many adventures along the way. He traveled by bike, plane, train, boat, camel, and elephant. He camped out some, but mostly stayed at hostels and hotels. He also did some of the rougher parts of the journey with a tour group, but not the swanky groups that most people think of when they travel. After his journey, he used all his internet postings to write a book: “Planet Backpacker.”

This is not backpacking in the sense of hiking the Appalachian Trail, but in the sense that he had to carry everything with him in a pack, including his guitar. My friend Bev gave me this book for my birthday last July, and I finally got to read it a couple of months ago. I really enjoyed his story, and it made me think of the wanderlust in most of us. Unlike most of us however, Mr. Downes did something about it, sacrificing income, comfort, and family ties for nearly half a year to have a grand adventure.

He saw some of the sadder and seamier sides of our species along the way: young girls in Asia living as sexual slaves, people existing in poverty that few of us can even imagine, scam artists, and people living with the after effects of terrible past wars. But for the most part, he met many interesting and friendly people from many different cultures and religious beliefs. Most of them were amazed to meet an American, because it turns out that despite being from the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, Americans (and also Canadians) are not prone to travel to foreign lands unless there is a resort or tour involved. Apparently, this is not true of Europeans, Australians, Kiwis, or Israelis.

I enjoyed reading this book. This man made his dream happen, paid the price in some discomfort and loneliness, and had an adventure that he will always remember. At the end of the book, he tells the rest of us how to do it and gives lots of advice, hints, and specific do’s and don’ts. If you like to travel, whether or not you ever think of doing a trip like this, I think you will want to read this book.

"Hope for Animals and Their World"

This morning, I developed a pesky migraine headache and even though the weather cleared later into a lovely day, I did not feel well enough to go for a hike. By around 5PM, I did finally feel a little better, so I went to a local park and alternated running and walking 3/4 mile laps through the woods around Echo Lake. I did four laps, two running and two walking, for a total of 3 miles - basically a 5K. It was warm and a little humid, but still a very pretty late summer day. Even though the calendar and the Equinox says fall, it is still really summer here for a bit longer.

I've been reading a great book by Jane Goodall, the dedicated and passionate conservationist. It is named "Hope for Animals and Their World," and was also written in part by two other authors. It is about how endangered species are being rescued from extinction, often at the last possible moment. Each species discussed is written about in the form of a separate chapter as a case study, for a total of about 40 species. Of course, this is a small subset of all possible endangered and vulnerable species of animals and plants.


I really recommend this book. It is sobering and also inspirational to think that many species still alive today are only in existance because a small number of individuals decided that something that to be done. They organized enough financial help and political will to litterally pull species away from the brink. Just a few examples in this country are the California condor, the black footed ferret, and the whooping crane. I saw the magnificent condors soaring above the Grand Canyon in 2000, and it was simply amazing - beyond words, really. They had been extinct in the wild, and now were roaming free again.

Species affected by human kind go extinct for many reasons: over hunting, habitat destruction, introduced disease and competitor species, pollution, and climate change. But animals and plants also become extinct because of human apathy. The people discussed in this book were not apathetic - they decided that a given species would not become extinct on their watch, and they did something about it. I very much recommend this book if you are interested in our natural world, and the plight of the fellow species who inhabit it with us.