After the last PCT book I read, I wanted a little different view of the long-distance hiking thing, and I certainly got it with Dances With Marmots. George Spearing is a firefighter from New Zealand who decides he needs to get away for awhile, and heads out to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. This book reads very informally; like a you'd imagine a conversation with a kiwi firefighter over a beer might be transcribed. I think they have some different punctuation rules in New Zealand, too; I kept wishing this had been proofread better. (But I'm picky...) That said, it did give a pretty good insight into someone hiking the PCT solo, which was cool. As mentioned in the comments to my post on "Blistered Kind of Love", though, this book takes 200 pages to cover the California sections, then skips over Oregon and Washington in less than 50. I guess that's to be expected - a hiker makes all their discoveries and learns all their lessons early on, after a certain amount of time, it just becomes making the mileage. But it would be cool to read more about the northern sections.
Book 63
2 comments:
A nice long backpacking hike over the course of a week, just to get outside and relax sounds like heaven right now...
Attempted to post a while back but not sure if it went through. So my apologies if I'm bashing your ears (eyes?) for a second time!
Came across your blog whilst hiking the internet.
I'm the author of DWM and appreciate your comments re' the differing lengths of the 'State' chapters. There was a reason for that though - it took me three months to get through California and only a month to get through Oregon and another month for Washington. Publishers I'd approached had also advised that an optimum overall length for the book would be around 75,000 words. So the above factors influenced the end result.
Anyhow, thanks again for the comments, hope you enjoyed the read and my punctuation wasn't too hairy! :^)
BTW, any connections with NZ? Turi is a maori name. Turi was the captain of the Aotea canoe - one of the legendary canoes in the first immigration wave of the maori.
(it can also mean 'deaf','knee' and 'disobedient'!!!) :^)
Cheers,
George
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