Why am I passionate about this?

National Geographic Adventurer of the Year, Heather Anderson is the only woman who has completed the Appalachian, Pacific Crest, and Continental Divide National Scenic Trails each three times. This includes her historic Calendar Year Triple Crown hike in 2018 when she hiked all three of those trails in one March-November season, making her the first female to do so. As an itinerant hiker, runner, and mountaineer she has logged over 40,000 foot miles since 2003 including over a dozen thru-hikes and many ultramarathons. She is also an avid mountaineer and peakbagger working on several ascent lists in the US and abroad.


I wrote

Book cover of Mud, Rocks, Blazes: Letting Go on the Appalachian Trail

What is my book about?

Heather Anderson’s second memoir tells the story not only of her attempt to set a Fastest Known Time on the…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of On the Road

Heather Anish Anderson Why did I love this book?

“I looked at the high cracked ceilings and really didn’t know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn’t scared, I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost…I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future, and maybe that’s why it happened right there and then that strange red afternoon.”

When I read these words set the book down and stared up at my own ceiling. Never before had I read someone captured the restlessness I felt. The need to push onward, to move, to find the self that was inside me somewhere. Jack Kerouac captures the vagabond impetus like no other.

By Jack Kerouac,

Why should I read it?

12 authors picked On the Road as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The legendary novel of freedom and the search for authenticity that defined a generation, now in a striking new Pengiun Classics Deluxe Edition

Inspired by Jack Kerouac's adventures with Neal Cassady, On the Road tells the story of two friends whose cross-country road trips are a quest for meaning and true experience. Written with a mixture of sad-eyed naivete and wild ambition and imbued with Kerouac's love of America, his compassion for humanity, and his sense of language as jazz, On the Road is the quintessential American vision of freedom and hope, a book that changed American literature and changed…


Book cover of Into the Wild

Heather Anish Anderson Why did I love this book?

Every vagabond feels the need to walk away from who they are and start again. Hikertrash know the need to find that new start in the wild. Krakauer captures this with his incredible profile of Chris McCandless who renames himself “Supertramp.” While Chris doesn’t walk the Pacific Crest Trail, he immerses himself into wild nature with an incredible willingness to discover depths of himself that few are willing to examine.

By Jon Krakauer,

Why should I read it?

19 authors picked Into the Wild as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Krakauer’s page-turning bestseller explores a famed missing person mystery while unraveling the larger riddles it holds: the profound pull of the American wilderness on our imagination; the allure of high-risk activities to young men of a certain cast of mind; the complex, charged bond between fathers and sons.

"Terrifying... Eloquent... A heart-rending drama of human yearning." —New York Times

In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all…


Book cover of The Unlikely Thru-Hiker: An Appalachian Trail Journey

Heather Anish Anderson Why did I love this book?

All aspiring hikertrash have to start somewhere and Derick relates this journey with great honesty and humor. I started my vagabond life on the Appalachian Trail a decade before Derick did, but I found myself laughing in commiseration with his escapades as he learned what it means to walk across the country. Unlikely captures not only the highlights of hikertrash life, but also the lows, the drudgery, and the beautiful camaraderie that forms between people on journeys. Whether you hike or wander a different path, these themes connect for us all.

By Derick Lugo,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Unlikely Thru-Hiker as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Derick Lugo had never been hiking. He certainly couldn't imagine going more than a day without manicuring his goatee. But with a job cut short and no immediate plans, this fixture of the New York comedy scene began to think about what he might do with months of free time. He had heard of the Appalachian Trail, but he had never seriously considered attempting to hike all 2,184.2 miles of it. Suddenly he found himself asking, Could he do it? 
 
The Unlikely Thru-Hiker is the story of how a young black man from the city, unfamiliar with both the outdoors…


Book cover of Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Heather Anish Anderson Why did I love this book?

Wild is the quintessential journey through grief and back to self. There are a handful of experiences that unite all humans and loss is one of these threads. Cheryl weaves her narrative of grief with the powerful magic of wandering in nature. Together they illustrate just how strong our connection to the Earth and each other is.

By Cheryl Strayed,

Why should I read it?

30 authors picked Wild as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe—and built her back up again.

At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the…


Book cover of Eat Pray Love

Heather Anish Anderson Why did I love this book?

What is more truly vagabond than packing up your life and traveling abroad for a year? Elizabeth dives deep into herself by going solo and immersing herself in three cultures. Hers is the perfect illustration of rejecting societal norms and her own internal demons to find the abundant life she wants.

By Elizabeth Gilbert,

Why should I read it?

8 authors picked Eat Pray Love as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

_________________ OVER 15 MILLION COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDE _________________ 'Eat, Pray, Love has been passed from woman to woman like the secret of life' - Sunday Times 'A defining work of memoir' - Sunday Telegraph 'Engaging, intelligent, and highly entertaining' - Time _________________ It's 3 a.m. and Elizabeth Gilbert is sobbing on the bathroom floor. She's in her thirties, she has a husband, a house, they're trying for a baby - and she doesn't want any of it. A bitter divorce and a turbulent love affair later, she emerges battered and bewildered and realises it is time to pursue her own…


Explore my book 😀

Book cover of Mud, Rocks, Blazes: Letting Go on the Appalachian Trail

What is my book about?

Heather Anderson’s second memoir tells the story not only of her attempt to set a Fastest Known Time on the iconic Appalachian Trail, but also delves deeply into the psychology of a driven endurance athlete and the personal growth she gains along the way.

The 2,180 miles of the AT, from Maine to Georgia, did not make it easy. Anderson contended with pouring rain, sultry humidity, biting gnats and flies, blisters, and steep grades for fifty-four days on a physically difficult, yet profoundly internal journey. Mud, Rocks, Blazes is a testament to the power of a challenging physical feat to transform a person's self-awareness and sense of self-worth. As Anderson comes to realize, “The trail has a way of answering questions you most need answered, even if you are afraid to ask.”

Book cover of On the Road
Book cover of Into the Wild
Book cover of The Unlikely Thru-Hiker: An Appalachian Trail Journey

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Elephant Safari

By Peter Riva,

Book cover of Elephant Safari

Peter Riva Author Of Kidnapped on Safari

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been to, and loved, North, Central, and especially East Africa for over fifty years. Only six times have I been to Africa on holiday; more often, perhaps twenty or more times, as a television producer. Working in Africa gains a perspective of reality that the glories of vacation do not. Each has its place, each its pitfalls like stalled plane rides with emergency landings in the bush or attacks by wildlife. But, in the end, the magic of the “otherness,” what an old friend called “primitava” captures one’s soul and changes your life.

Peter's book list on the otherness that few get to experience

What is my book about?

Keen to rekindle their love of East African wildlife adventures after years of filming, extreme dangers, and rescues, producer Pero Baltazar, safari guide Mbuno Waliangulu, and Nancy Breiton, camerawoman, undertake a filming walking adventure north of Lake Rudolf, crossing from Kenya into Ethiopia along the Omo River, following a herd of elephant making their annual migration.

Stumbling onto an elephant poaching, the team become embroiled in true financing of terrorism for al Shabaab –ivory sales–and are determined to stop the slaughter at any cost. Ivory trade financing terrorism involves UN refugee camps with two hundred thousand displaced Somali persons, powerful…

Elephant Safari

By Peter Riva,

What is this book about?

A documentary team hiking through East Africa collides with a gang of deadly poachers, in this gripping adventure by the author of Kidnapped on Safari.

Years of filming, extreme dangers, and daring rescues have taken their toll on documentary producer Pero Baltazar and his team. To relax and reconnect with the East African wildlife they love, Pero organizes a walking safari for him, his camerawoman Nancy Breiton, and their elite guide Mbuno Waliangulu. Still, Pero has trouble truly disconnecting from work. When the team comes across a herd of elephants making their annual migration north of Lake Rudolf, Pero decides…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in hiking, grief, and the American West?

Hiking 49 books
Grief 90 books
The American West 137 books