Customer Reviews

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

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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

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.

"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.

Bill McKibben describes a walk through place and community. The community is bound by a geographic region but the displaced reader is imperceptibly drawn into the mind-set of McKibben and his guests. You are introduced to a group who love the land on the Vermont/New York border and recognise it as one of the few "wild" places left in America. It is their passion to preserve and conserve that comes through and it is infectious. The book inspires the reader to analyse their relationship to place and modes of behaviour driven by place. The antithesis of economic consumption exists in all of us, however repressed. Bill brings it to the fore. The effect on the distant reader is such that you will join the community despite being so far way. Bravo Bill !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bill McKibben walks for sixteen days through the Adirondack Mountains to share his love of the land with his readers but what makes the book so special are the people Bill introduces, walks with, and talks with (and about...) along his journey. I was a Travel Agent for five years and was lucky enough to be sent to some of the best, first class places in America and this journey that Bill McKibben takes us on with his words is more meaningful than many of those places I went to which include the Grand Canyon & Scottsdale, AZ; the San Francisco Bay Area; Paradise Island & Nassau, Bahamas; Manhattan; the Sierra-Nevada Mountains (by train); and New Orleans & Mississippi River Cruise!

Each authentic and real person that McKibben joins on his trek lends a hand in telling the story. The book is as much about the beauty of the people as it is of the land. I grew up twenty miles away from the Allegheny National Forest in Pennsylvania, and presently I am a steward and guardian of 400 acres of land in central PA with my husband, his uncle, and my husband's brother and I share and appreciate Bill McKibben's deep love for the power of nature, the wild, and the people. I found John Davis (owns a bicycle, no car) as one of the most interesting characters in the book. I also like the stories of Chris Shaw, who has the good sense of memorializing the people who have passed on but that once lived in the Adirondacks and give the book historical authenticity. My favorite stories in the book are from Donald Armstrong and especially Armstrong's memory he shares with McKibben (and us) about Don's wife, Velda and a fly-fishing event. I laughed so hard I cried! It is a funny moment, but this husband-wife story is so cute and sweet, and gives one a feeling of nostalgia. (The church steeple is a cool part, too.) This is a gem of a story and Wandering Home is a gem of a book.

I am a people person and for the first few chapters of Wandering Home I'm thinking that it is too bad Bill McKibben spends all this passion on the Adirondacks. I imagine what his passion could do to improve the lives of the infirm or impoverished people. Much to my chagrin, in the last few chapters McKibben admits this deficit with charm and honesty. He admits he should spend more time helping the less fortunate, and then justifies his love and preservation of the Adirondacks as his way of giving something back to people. And, I agree that he has. Furthermore, he explains that he tries not to be a drain on the planet. If only we could all think this way, maybe our global warming and environmental problems would vanish. For the first time in my life, I realize the full extent of the impact that people have had and still have on our surroundings and I am saddened and sickened by it. (I imagine a sunrise or a sunset over a mountain, or an ocean breeze I thank God there are still a few areas left in this world that man / woman hasn't been able to get his / her hands on.)

I do have one eco-criticism of Wandering Home. Bill writes that he and John Davis climb to the top of Owl's Head on page 93 of his book. Owl's Head is a considerable distance away from Bristol, and is not included in the path outlined on the inside covers of his book. But, every author has to create mystery in some way, right? Judging by the description of Owl's Head I can see why McKibben would include it in his "walk" since Owl's Head sounds like a stunning place with it's 390 degree view of the Adirondack mountains. On my map, Owl's Head is about sixty miles north of Lake Placid one way, as the crow flies.

Dr. Robert Bernard Hass (English Professor, poet, writer, and Robert Frost expert at Edinboro University) and I got into a discussion about hyper-individualism in class one day. Dr. Hass told me about his friend named Bill McKibben and how McKibben writes about hyper-individualism and that a good place to start on the subject would be Wandering Home. I am grateful that Hass recommended the book to me. It was a book that I was sad to see end, but a journey I will always remember in more ways than one. I was so inspired that I am planning on a short family vacation to the Adirondacks for this summer. I will do my best to demonstrate a sense of forest preservation and protection while I'm there, visiting the wild of the Adirondacks.

I have spent much of my recreational time in the two places Bill McKibben writes about in this book -- The Adirondacks of New York and the Champlain Valley of Vermont. They both offer some of the most beautiful, pastoral scenery in the US. From Lake Champlain itself you can see the Green Mountains of Vermont on one side and the Adirondack Mountains of New York on the other. As Mr. KcKibben points out, while they may look similar and proximate from afar, each is quite different from the other. The Champlain Valley is more pastoral, bucolic and New England-like. The Adirondacks are much more rugged, wilderness-like and rough around the edges. Both can call to you in a way that becomes a lifetime's pursuit.

This book is an easy and short read. It is engaging, paints wonderful pictures with words and gets you to think about the tension between a simpler life closer to the natural world and modern society and progress/development. He is fair in his assessment of the joys and the struggles associated with a simpler life closer to nature. I don't know who would enjoy this book more - the person who has enjoyed this simpler life or one who can only imagine it through books like this one. I highly recommend this book for people who love this part of the world or who have thought about getting closer to the land and living a simpler life.

This book is thin. I mean literally. It is really just a somewhat longish essay. I was disappointed that there was not more depth, more history, more "more."

This is the story of McKibben's amble from Vermont to the central Adirondacks, with a crossing by row boat of Lake Champlain. McKibben is a good writer and he loves this landscape and is very concerned about it and its place in the global environment, but I could not help comparing him and this book to another Bill-namely Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods. Bryson is a much more energetic writer. In my opinion, he is funnier and deeper than McKibben. A Walk in the Woods is a great book, Wandering Home is light weight by comparison.

McKibben has some very good thoughts on environmental issues and expresses an admirable moderation in this book. He is especially sensitive to the complexity of many environmental issues and actively criticizes the "knee-jerk" environmentalists for over-simplifying the issues in many cases. On the other hand, McKibben is something of a romantic airhead. Often his ruminations are fatuous and patronizing; for example, his dogma that those simple Vermont farmers and old Adirondack loggers that he's met are more "authentic" than you or I (McKibben makes this claim more than once in Wandering Home).

Nevertheless, I liked this book and enjoyed reading it. McKibben loves the Adirondacks and so do I. In this short book he's managed to capture something of the flavor of the hidden Adirondacks, that fortunately so few people know. The Adirondack Park of New York is the most beautiful sylvan landscape in the world. McKibben's book raises, but barely starts to answer, such questions as why and how to protect and preserve the Adirondacks and other similarly blessed places.

"A blur not a line." It is so refreshing to read an author who admits there are trade offs in everything we do. It is important to have blocks of pure wilderness, but there is no pure isolation and the edges in all dimensions will be impacted by what is around that wilderness. Choices have to be made and impacts acknowledged and then more choices and adjustments.

This book was not just a journey of walking, it was a journey alongside people McKibben had come to know and respected. It was fascinating learning more about the Champlain Valley and the Adirondacks and those people and the blurs they are working to shape.

Bill McKibben comes through again. This time it's "a walk in his woods," a three week hike connecting upstate Vermont with the Adirondacks.

When you travel with Bill, it's a journey of body, a journey of mind and a journey of spirit, all rolled into one. You'll meet other folks along the way, people who have something to say to Bill and to you. You travel easy with Bill. This Bill is not as funny as Bill Bryson but he's more thoughtful. And he'll get you thinking.

This book is a book about a place and about the history of that place. Having hiked in both areas, I especially enjoyed the subtle distinctions Bill is able to discern in landscape, flora and in the character of people between what he sees in the gentle hills of Vermont and the rougher landscape and terrain of the Adirondacks.

Take this trip with Bill McKibben. You'll be glad you did.

A very inspiring and gently provocative account of a trip, the likes of which we should all take at least once during our lifetime--even though we could not hope to achieve McKibben's mastery in telling a story.