Wandering Home: A Long Walk Across America's Most Hopeful Landscape: Vermont's Champlain Valley and New York's Adirondacks (Crown Journeys) [Hardcover]

Bill McKibben (Author)

Book Description

Series: Crown Journeys | Publication Date: April 12, 2005

The acclaimed author of The End of Nature takes a three-week walk from his current home in Vermont to his former home in the Adirondacks and reflects on the deep hope he finds in the two landscapes.

Bill McKibben begins his journey atop Vermont’s Mt. Abraham, with a stunning view to the west that introduces us to the broad Champlain Valley of Vermont, the expanse of Lake Champlain, and behind it the towering wall of the Adirondacks. “In my experience,” McKibben tells us, “the world contains no finer blend of soil and rock and water and forest than that found in this scene laid out before me—a few just as fine, perhaps, but none finer. And no place where the essential human skills—cooperation, husbandry, restraint—offer more possibility for competent and graceful inhabitation, for working out the answers that the planet is posing in this age of ecological pinch and social fray.”

The region he traverses offers a fine contrast between diverse forms of human habitation and pure wilderness. On the Vermont side, he visits with old friends who are trying to sustain traditional ways of living on the land and to invent new ones, from wineries to biodiesel. After crossing the lake in a rowboat, he backpacks south for ten days through the vast Adirondack woods. As he walks, he contemplates the questions that he first began to raise in his groundbreaking meditation on climate change, The End of Nature: What constitutes the natural? How much human intervention can a place stand before it loses its essence? What does it mean for a place to be truly wild?

Wandering Home is a wise and hopeful book that enables us to better understand these questions and our place in the natural world. It also represents some of the best nature writing McKibben has ever done.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In this latest addition to the Crown Journeys series, McKibben, the author of bestseller The End of Nature, writes with his usual wry, approachable power about the Adirondacks, his chosen home. While hiking from Vermont's Mt. Abraham to the wilder forests in New York, McKibben stops in at various ecologically-minded business concerns, including an organic winery and a prototype small college garden. He is accompanied by a who's who of environmentalists, including the president of Greenpeace, USA, and a founder of the revolutionary Earth First! Journal. Because of his longtime friendships with his fellow hikers, McKibben is able to capture them at their best, speaking with great knowledge and love for nature. But none is more eloquent than McKibben, who writes, "It's a quiet day, nothing spectacular except the mushrooms sprouting obscenely in this wet summer, but quietly grand, just like this country ... it's the impressions that linger with me, the sense of the woods as a whole-the relief, the density, the changing feel underfoot and overheard." Here is a nature writer who can consider all sides of an argument and happily end up uncertain of the precise solution, but sure of his nearly evangelical passion for the mountains he calls home. This book could single-handedly spur a rush of tourism to the Adirondack area-it's that good.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

As McKibben hikes across the land he loves, setting out from tidy Vermont and heading into the wilds of New York's Adirondack Mountains, he rhapsodizes about gorgeous mountain vistas, pristine lakes, and deep woods. It's a boon to find the author of eight cutting-edge books about grave environmental concerns, including The End of Nature (1989) and Enough (2003), in a hopeful state of mind, especially since McKibben, charmingly self-deprecating and funny, isn't only communing with nature but also visiting individuals committed to living "green," including organic farmers, a vintner, a beekeeper, environmental studies students, wildlands philanthropy promoter John Davis, and writer Don Mitchell. Thanks to their efforts, this once hard-used land is now restored and rebounding. As McKibben considers nature's "lessons in flux and resiliency," he also reflects on the evolution of environmental thought and his own eco-awakening, ultimately positing the possibility of our forgoing "hyperindividualism" and unbridled materialism to achieve a balance between the wild and the cultivated, and a sense of community that embraces the entire web of life. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Crown (April 12, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0609610732
• ISBN-13: 978-0609610732
• Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 0.8 x 7.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #142,511 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #47 in Books > Travel > United States > States > New York

More About the Author

Bill McKibben is the author of The End of Nature, Deep Economy, and numerous other books. He is the founder of the environmental organizations Step It Up and 350.org, and was among the first to warn of the dangers of global warming. He is a scholar in residence at Middlebury College and lives in Vermont with his wife, the writer Sue Halpern, and their daughter.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Three Week Walk In The Woods, April 29, 2005

By 

prisrob "pris," (New England USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: Wandering Home: A Long Walk Across America's Most Hopeful Landscape: Vermont's Champlain Valley and New York's Adirondacks (Crown Journeys) (Hardcover)

Mt Abraham in Vermont has a beautiful view to the west, to the Champlain Valley and Lake Champlain. Here is where environmentalist, Bill McKibben starts his walk from one home in Vermont to another home in New York State. This is not a book about a walk from country to city, no; this is a walk in the country to the country through the most amazing woodland in the East, the Adirondacks.

Bill McKibben starts his walk from his home in Ripton, Vermont near the famous Middlebury College where he has a post. Between Ripton and Johnsburg, New York where he finished his walk, we meet the most fascinating environmentalists and friends and glimpse through Bill's view the glorious vistas. This is a novel that takes you into the land. Through out the book, I could picture in my mind what Bill McKibben was actually seeing, his prose is so vivid. He has a love of his land and all land, and that comes through loud and clear. However, he is also quite truthful about the life he and his family live. They know they have a wonderful life, and his righteousness only goes so far. He benefits from what he calls "the systematic abuse of the planet". Cheap food, cheap energy and cheap wood are in abundance. He and his wife have tried to rein themselves in, they have one child, drive a modest hybrid car, and have a solar home. His friends take turns walking with him. The President of Greenpeace and other people involved in environmental groups walk and talk and tell tales of their exploits.

The most interesting portions of the book are those tales told by the people who live on the land, and the stories of their ancestors. In Lock Muller, a small town in New York, a giant white pine shades the ground, and from it hangs a sign:

"On this site in 1845 this pine tree, a sapling of twelve years, was transplanted
by me, at he age of twelve years. Seventy-five years I have watched and protected
it. In my advancing years it has given me rest and comfort. Woodman spare that
tree, touch not a single bough, In youth it sheltered me, and I'll protect it now."
Pascal P Warren, June 14, 1920

Teddy Roosevelt loved New York State, and he loved the Adirondacks the most. He loved climbing the mountains, and it was on such a mountain that he learned that due to an accident he was now the President of the United States. As Governor of New York, he preserved much of the Adirondacks and it became state land, not to be touched and left in pristine condition. Bill McKibben discusses the logging of the land, and the safe conservation of our land. He gives us much of the past history of the Adirondacks, and the people who inhabit the small towns and villages throughout. This is a lovely book, we walk along with the author, and feel like his neighbor. He tells us stories, and we meet his friends and yearn to see his land as he sees it. This is a wise book that gives us hope. Highly recommended. prisrob

22 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A dangerous book, October 23, 2005

By 

Paula L. Craig (Falls Church, VA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Wandering Home: A Long Walk Across America's Most Hopeful Landscape: Vermont's Champlain Valley and New York's Adirondacks (Crown Journeys) (Hardcover)

Bill McKibben is a thoughtful writer. Most of all, this book made me wish I could take a hike with him and meet the land he loves so much. Be warned that this book might make you homesick, even if you've never been to Vermont or the Adirondacks. But beyond that, the book has some serious points to make.

I'm a suburbanite trapped in the cycle of debt that has sucked in so many Americans (in my case, student loans and a mortgage). I work for the Department of Commerce. I have a husband. I have a child who is addicted to video games. I don't have the money or the freedom to move to the Adirondacks, or even take a trip there. This book is a reminder that Americans don't have to live the way we do. We might very well be happier if we got rid of a lot of our stuff and lived more lightly on the land. Of course, McKibben punctures that little bubble by pointing out that a lot of people have tried to do that in Vermont, with laughable results.

I believe that once the cheap oil is gone, life in America is going to be very different. Ordinary American life today puts so much emphasis on getting places quickly. In the not-so-distant future we're going to be staying much more in one spot, and only rarely going anywhere we can't reach on foot or bicycle. This book is a reminder that such a stationary life might not be so bad. There's more to a meaningful and happy existence than what cheap gasoline and Wal-Mart can bring. Maybe someday the science of economics will remember that.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars How green is my valley, July 22, 2009

By 

Andrew Silow-Carroll - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Wandering Home: A Long Walk Across America's Most Hopeful Landscape: Vermont's Champlain Valley and New York's Adirondacks (Crown Journeys) (Hardcover)

"Wandering Home" compares favorably with John McPhee's "The Pine Barrens" in its scope and depth. Wonderful evocation of landscape, of people, and the stakes in the environmental debate. I spent summers on Lake Champlain as a kid and know the pull the region has on a person, as McKibben evokes so wonderfully well.

But there is also something smug about his love of the place -- reminiscent of the way writer Michael Lewis got in trouble for a rhapsodic essay about his model wife's lovely behind. McKibben has his houses on the Vermont and New York sides, a way to pay for them both, and all this untrammelled wilderness as his backyard. How many of the rest of us could hope to duplicate his lifestyle, his access to nature, the benefits he accrues from wilderness? The Adirondacks are a land of natural plenty, for sure, but also a region of scarcity -- scarce housing,scarce jobs, and severe (and essential) limits on development. McKibben comes off as the last guy to get into the club before the door was closed --and then calls you to boast about how great it is inside.

I'm not sure what the rest of us can take away from this, despite our envy and an intense desire to return to the place for a visit.