Yoga Girl


Rachel Brathen - 2014
    In Yoga Girl, Brathen takes readers beyond her Instagram feed and shares her journey like never before—from her self-destructive teenage years in her hometown in Sweden to her adventures in the jungles of Costa Rica, and finally to the beautiful and bohemian life she’s built through yoga and meditation in Aruba today. Featuring spectacular photos of Brathen practicing yoga with breathtaking tropical backdrops, along with step-by-step yoga sequences and simple recipes for a healthy, happy, and fearless lifestyle—Yoga Girl is like an armchair vacation to a Caribbean spa.

Car Camping: The Book of Desert Adventures


Mark Sundeen - 2000
    He's like Huckleberry Finn Sort of. He's a twenty-two-year-old housepainter living at his parents' house in Southern California, across a four-lane street from a gated subdivision. Now this suburban innocent is striking out on the only type of adventure he can afford: he's getting into his station wagon and going camping in the desert. Join Mark Sundeen on his rumble-tumble journey across the Southwest, and find that the mystical home of Butch Cassidy, Chief Cochise, and Major John Wesley Powell has been transformed into something entirely strange yet unexpectedly familiar. It's a new West of low-rent trailer parks and high-dollar houseboats, of hot-springs singles scenes and homeless river guides and hapless soul-searchers, for sun-beat old-timers chewing the cud of the land and survivalist teenagers hiding out form the Man. It's a place far from the America you thought you lived in, but close enough to drive to in your car. Car Camping is a modern-day western adventure in the spirit of Mark Twain and Jack London, and you're invited to come along.

Growing Up Psychic: From Skeptic to Believer


Michael Bodine - 2010
    It includes amazing true stories- a dangerous ghost friend with a hidden agenda, the hodgepodge of psychics who gathered in his mother's kitchen, ghost hunting misadventures, spirit messages, possession- along with an inspiring account of his successful battle against chemical dependancy as he learned to accept his unusual gift.

Orvis Fly-Fishing Guide, Completely Revised and Updated with Over 400 New Color Photos and Illustrations


Tom Rosenbauer - 2007
    A best-selling, fully illustrated, and comprehensive book, this large-format volume has been required reading for every angler for the past two decades. Included here are instructions for tackle selection; casting and presentation; flies and their specific uses; successful techniques on stream, pond, or ocean; and the select tackle, flies, and methods for pursuing every major gamefish in fresh and salt water, from bass to bonefish, tarpon to trout.

Call of the Wild: My Escape to Alaska


Guy Grieve - 2006
    But he dreamed of escaping it all to live alone in one of the wildest, most remote places on earth - Alaska. And just when he'd given up hope, the dream came true. Suddenly Guy was thrown into one of the harshest environments in the world, miles from the nearest human being and armed with only the most basic equipment. And he soon found - whether building a log cabin from scratch, hunting, ice fishing or of course dodging bears in the buff - that life in the wilderness was anything but easy...Part Ray Mears, part Bill Bryson, CALL OF THE WILD is the gripping story of how a mild-mannered commuter struggled with the elements - and himself - and eventually learned the ways of the wild.

Skywalker: Highs and Lows on the Pacific Crest Trail


Bill Walker - 2010
    Bill Walker ("Skywalker"), who stands 6'11", might seem like anything but average. Yet in a brutally honest tone, he lays to bare all his considerable weaknesses and fears. Among these are crushing weight loss and fatigue, along with a fear of getting lost or a bear stealing his food. Nonetheless, he is bound and determined to hike the PCT, which at 2,663 miles, runs all the way from Mexico to Canada.The PCT's calling card is its stunning beauty. It has a diversity of geography unequaled by any footpath in the world. Haunting and beckoning the PCT hiker are the implacable desert, the towering majesty of the so-called High Sierra, and the ruggedly bleak, northern Cascade range. Indeed, the PCT hiker faces much greater extremes of terrain and climate than on the famed Appalachian Trail. Completing this demanding challenge calls for overwhelming clarity of purpose.Walker's signature characteristic as a writer is his real talent in capturing people ("Skywalker's humor, his delight in human foibles appeal to a broad audience."--Jeff Minnick, Smoky Mountain Book News). Obviously, he is a people person because he runs into and vividly describes a truly colorful cast of characters from seemingly all walks of American life. Among these are Uber Bitch, Shit Bag, and Serial Killer; the reader learns how these hikers ended up with their names (hint: blunders).The reader need not worry that Walker is a bully. Throughout this irreverent narrative, he turns his considerable supply of humor back on himself in ruthlessly self-deprecating fashion. It all makes for a delightful read.

Walking. One Step at a Time


Erling Kagge - 2019
    Our ancestors travelled long distances on foot, gaining new experiences and learning from them. But as universal as walking is, each of us will experience it differently. For Erling Kagge, walking is the gateway to the questions that fascinate him--Why do we walk? Where do we walk from? What is our destination?--and in this book he invites us to investigate them along with him. Language reflects the idea that life is one single walk; the word "journey" comes from the distance we travel in the course of a day. Walking for Kagge is a natural accompaniment to science: the occasion for the unspoken dialogue of thinking. Walking is also the antidote to the speed at which we conduct our lives, to our insistence on rushing, on doing everything in a precipitous manner--walking is among the most radical things we can do.

The Well-Gardened Mind: The Restorative Power of Nature


Sue Stuart-Smith - 2020
    But when we get our hands in the earth we connect with the cycle of life in nature through which destruction and decay are followed by regrowth and renewal. Gardening is one of the quintessential nurturing activities and yet we understand so little about it. The Well-Gardened Mind provides a new perspective on the power of gardening to change people’s lives. Here, Sue Stuart-Smith investigates the many ways in which mind and garden can interact and explores how the process of tending a plot can be a way of sustaining an innermost self. Stuart-Smith’s own love of gardening developed as she studied to become a psychoanalytic psychotherapist. From her grandfather’s return from World War I to Freud’s obsession with flowers to case histories with her own patients to progressive gardening programs in such places as Rikers Island prison in New York City, Stuart-Smith weaves thoughtful yet powerful examples to argue that gardening is much more important to our cognition than we think. Recent research is showing how green nature has direct antidepressant effects on humans. Essential and pragmatic, The Well-Gardened Mind is a book for gardeners and the perfect read for people seeking healthier mental lives.

A Barn in New England: Making a Home on Three Acres


Joseph Monninger - 2001
    "An utterly charming story, told with grace and insight" (Booklist starred review), A Barn in New England perfectly captures the beauty of the New England countryside, the tests of renovating a home, and the pleasures large and small of making a new place your own.

Nature Noir: A Park Ranger's Patrol in the Sierra


Jordan Fisher Smith - 2005
    Instead of scout troops and placid birdwatchers, Smith's beat -- a stretch of land that has been officially condemned to be flooded -- brings him into contact with drug users tweaked out to the point of violence, obsessed miners, and other dangerous creatures. In unflinchingly honest prose, he reveals the unexpectedly dark underbelly of patrolling and protecting public lands.

The Looniness of the Long Distance Runner


Russell Taylor - 2001
    His journey from the treadmill in North London to the mountains of Wales to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway illuminates the meaning of the egalitarian race, the only sport where any weekend jogger can run with world-class champions. For everyone who has contemplated running the marathon or watched from the sidelines feeling an uneasy mix of envy and gratitude, this comical and inspiring account will change their understanding of the legendary race.

Death, Daring, and Disaster: Search and Rescue in the National Parks


Charles R. Farabee Jr. - 1998
    375 exciting tales of heroism and tragedy drawn from the nearly 150,000 search and rescue missions carried out by the National Park Service since 1872.

Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country


Pam Houston - 2019
    Houston’s ranch becomes her sanctuary, a place where she discovers how the natural world has mothered and healed her after a childhood of parental abuse and neglect.In a work as lucid and invigorating as mountain air, Deep Creek delivers Houston’s most profound meditations yet on how “to live simultaneously inside the wonder and the grief . . . to love the damaged world and do what I can to help it thrive.”

Feet in the Clouds: A Tale of Fell-Running and Obsession


Richard Askwith - 2004
    With personal narrative by one of the participants of fell-running—a sport that little is known about, but one that also boasts mass-participation—this fascinating account of arduous circuits, week-long marathons, and pounding the mountainous trails of the Lake District and Snowdonia is a unique and compelling account of stamina and courage that stretches the limits of belief.

Running with Champions: A Midlife Journey on the Iditarod Trail


Lisa Frederic - 2006
    Lisa Frederic didn't set out to run the Iditarod. She just fell in love with the event and wanted to help. She ended up working as a volunteer for the Trail Committee at various checkpoints. Then she helped Iditarod champion Jeff King train his puppies. She had never mushed before. She was a rookie, but a rookie with heart and drive. She started out with short races and eventually raced the 1,049 miles from Anchorage to Nome in the Iditarod. Her story speaks to everyone who has ever followed a dream and found that the dream realized is even bigger than the imagined one.