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

~ (Author)

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.
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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

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Crown; Later printing edition (April 12, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0609610732
• ISBN-13: 978-0609610732
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #453,308 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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  #13 in	Books > Travel > United States > States > New York > Adirondacks
  #41 in	Books > Travel > United States > States > Vermont

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 24 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 EnglandUSA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

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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

20 of 23 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 (REAL NAME)

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.

2 of 2 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 (REAL NAME)

"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.