Walking to Vermont: From Times Square into the Green Mountains -- a Homeward Adventure [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Christopher S. Wren (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 24, 2004

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Whereas retirement from a successful career is often synonymous with a blowout party and the purchase of a sports car, former New York Times reporter Wren, who served as bureau chief in Moscow, Cairo, Beijing, Ottawa and Johannesburg, chose to defy the status quo and celebrate his own retirement by hiking nearly 400 miles in five weeks from Manhattan to Fairlee, Vt. Though this is a solo rite-of-passage, Wren, who became known on the trails as "Super Tortoise" for his slow but steadfast pace, encounters and befriends fellow hikers from around the world. Along the way, they swap camping stories and compare equipment, and as Wren's course meanders through fields and mountains, torrential downpours and tranquil sunsets, he learns to find comfort in the muddy, wet and open terrain. Wren departs from New York armed with the basics, including a copy of Thoreau's Walden, and slowly leaves the city's frazzled pace behind. Accompanied sporadically by old friends out for a day hike, Wren sheds his would-be retiree facade to become a hardened and resolute mountain man. With each state, he encounters refreshing vistas, new faces and mishaps, whether a twisted ankle or a risky tick-bite. Though navigating the snaking paths along the Appalachian Trail doesn't quite compare with interviewing an opium drug lord in Southeast Asia or going on an unplanned cocaine bust in Colombia, Wren fills this report with humor and historical references, tying escapades of his past with adventures from his current voyage.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

After a career in journalism that took him to more than 15 countries, the author planned to mark his retirement by seeing more of a single place he'd kept meaning to visit more often: his own country. The plan was to walk from New York City to Vermont, and this entertaining memoir chronicles his adventure. We get lots of the history lessons we associate with this type of book ("here was fought the Battle of Merritt Hill") and an assortment of offbeat and interesting characters--also something we expect from the Blue Highway genre. Still, if the book doesn't break any new ground for travel memoirists, it has much to offer. Wren's prose is lively ("It was not yet noon and hotter than a July bride in a feather bed"), and his eye for detail, developed over 40 years of journalism, provides us with a wealth of pleasure. Readers who enjoy a good travel memoir will enjoy this one very much. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; First Edition edition (February 24, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743251520
• ISBN-13: 978-0743251525
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,769,576 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Appalachian Odyssey, March 8, 2004

By 

Brian P Rafferty (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Walking to Vermont: From Times Square into the Green Mountains -- a Homeward Adventure (Hardcover)

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 black SUVs, mosquitoes and his memories. This isn't just a travelogue of sights along the way, though, it's a layered story of a man's life at a turning point, weaving remembrances (some harrowing) from a long life lived in many foreign places into the new, unfolding story of a man who is no longer what he was.

It's not to be confused with Travels with Charley, John Steinbeck's wonderful tale of travel across the country with his trusty poodle. Steinbeck was in search of his country's identity, but Christopher Wren's goal is more personal -- he's searching for his new self.

Wren's self-designed rite of passage fulfills the requirement of all such rites: redefinition. He begins his journey as a man at the end of a professional life, graduating into a gray, undefined role as "retiree". He emerges from the trail with a deep understanding of the meaninglessness of such titles and the resilience of human character.

The editorial reviews above mention that the book will be appreciated by hikers and lovers of "off beat adventures", etc. I think the book will be appreciated by anyone who wants to understand better how to be an adult and, last time I checked, that was everybody.

4.0 out of 5 stars Walking To Vermont- a reader's thoughts, June 17, 2009

By 

Doug Doogood "Hiker Doug" (Central Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Walking to Vermont: From Times Square into the Green Mountains -- a Homeward Adventure (Paperback)

Christopher Wren's walk is relatively short and tame compared to others who have written of trekking. Despite the lack of dangers, Wren's observations are interesting, humorous and educational. His editorial comments were keen and moved the book along by mixing daily events and thoughts in just the right doses.
The book did bog down along the Appalachian Trail (just like most long walks bog down at points). Overall, the book is an enjoyable, educational, easy read and well worth the time I invested in it.

5.0 out of 5 stars No denial here, it's a good read!, March 4, 2007

By 

M. G. "MG" (Northern VA United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Walking to Vermont: From Times Square into the Green Mountains -- a Homeward Adventure (Paperback)

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, chances are you will enjoy it. I gave it 5 stars to make up for some of those 2 star submissions. I've given it to my Mom, who has read it and enjoyed it and plans to give it to my sister. I wouldn't be surprised if it makes it's way to my Dad after that ... Enjoy.