Walking Without Footprints: Going Native in America [Paperback]

Connie Delaney (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 8, 2002

Sit back in your chair and drop out of society at the same time. This book takes you on the journey of one young American as she shuns the world of commerce and escapes into the wilderness to learn from the rivers and trees.Walking Without Footprints is the compelling story of the author in the early 1970's as she grabs a backpack and heads into the mountainous wilderness of central Colorado. Connie's story intertwines with wisdom and tales from Zen, Buddhist and Sufi traditions as she learns to escape from her own mind and conditionings. Add to this mix the past instigation of Catholic school nuns and the free-thinking mentality of the baby-boomer generation and you have a rebel who won't quit until she has reached the deepest core of what it means to be a human being, alive on our planet today.Follow Connie on her adventure as she pitches a tipi and gets snowed into a mining claim cabin. Discover how to listen with your elbows, overcome fear of death, track a cougar, and walk through the world leaving no footprints behind. You'll never see your day-to-day life the same again.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Connie Delaney studied nature in remote western wilderness areas and has published numerous ecology and back-to-the-land articles. She is a handspinner, publisher of SpinCraft Patterns, and author of the premier spinning book: Spindle Spinning. She is an eclectic meditation teacher, Dances of Universal Peace leader, writer, and website designer.

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: iUniverse (October 8, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0595246605
• ISBN-13: 978-0595246601
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,165,778 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Deep Pool of the Unexpected, July 7, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Walking Without Footprints: Going Native in America (Paperback)

I, too, loved this book! Connie describes herself as "the kind of a person who can sit down and read a whole book in a day." That's exactly what I did with her book. I couldn't put it down.
It's a great adventure story, a courageous survival tale, a native-to-America biographical account in an authentic voice. It's a stages of life journey with a packet of profound insights which occurred to the author in the context of daily life. She didn't go sit on a mountain top--well, yes she did--but she didn't go to get away from it all--well, yes she did--but she didn't have an agenda in mind, no pre-determined dogma to live by, just the desire "to find the free, natural way to live." What she found, beyond the events of the story, were deep spiritual realizations, consonant with those from the world's great mystical traditions. I found it awe-some and amazing. Truth reveals itself in all circumstances. As she says, "We are deep pools of the unexpected."

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I loved this book!, December 9, 2002

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Walking Without Footprints: Going Native in America (Paperback)

I loved this book! I would encourage every person who has ever reflected back on thier life, anyone who has ever asked why?, anybody who has ever tried to make sense of this crazy world we live in, to read Connie Delaney's Walking Without Footprints. Walk along with Connie as she explores the world with her unabashed humanity exposed at every turn. There is great adventure here, and love, and wisdom, and folly. All of this spiced with her unique brand of humor, and interpretation of life's mysteries from Zen, Sufi, and Buddhist traditions. I laughed out loud at Connie's attempts to erect a tipi for the first time, puzzled over her fascination with a grasshopper incident, and grieved with her over the loss of a child. This is truly a manual for wayward adventurers, filled with stories and advice only Connie could dream up. I was fascinated by her journey of self-discovery, and all the appealing, mysterious, and appalling experiences which life brought to her... and now are shared with us. I hope there will be a sequel to Walking Without Footprints - I'd like to find out what happens next! For now, I wish I could send a copy to every forty-something friend I know. As we all reflect back on our own journey through this world, we can at least see how one person did it! (And lived to tell about it!) Thanks, Connie, for a great read!

4.0 out of 5 stars Mostly good--mixed bag at times, November 16, 2011

By 

Horselady - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Walking Without Footprints: Going Native in America (Paperback)

Just doing the math, the author is a year younger than me so I tried to imagine myself in her position at various ages. I never got a real sense of why she chose the wilderness life at 18. Most of the book was enjoyable and I couldn't wait to get back to it, but a few things are worth mentioning.

She spent a good deal of time talking about how to put up a tipi--okay if you really want to know this, but seems if this is something important to the reader, they'd get a manual on it. Also another weird part was how fixated she was on telling everyone the proper way to squat to poop in the woods. Do we really need instruction on something so simple?

I enjoyed the first part of the book, but a few stories seemed a bit far-fetched, such as how she scared away a whole car of men and another man that same night who was following her.

Unfortunately I read some parts where she graphically describes killing animals--I tried to skip over those parts--I found them disturbing.

I was wondering where the story would end up and it seems, in my opinion, her wilderness life started to go to pot when she met a man and started having children. The book takes on a different tone at that point and never really is too interesting after that. She throws in alot of various middle eastern philosophy as well as her own throughout the book. The last 15% (I read it on a Kindle) of the book is her rambling about some lofty philosophy that didn't make alot of sense and I really wanted this book to have a happy ending, but it seems to me that she ended up a poor, middle-aged woman with no skills to live in the world she tried to escape but eventually was thrust back into.

I looked for a sequel but haven't seen one but now that I think about it, I don't know what else you could write about--the wilderness adventure was clearly over. Left me wondering what she is doing now.