Current read

Summer has really come back with a vengeance. Fortunately we had a good storm last night that cleared out the humidity. A collage of the clouds in the extra.

This morning before the heat got too bad I had washed my car. Soaking up some Vitamin D and a clean car...except for the dog hair I need to vacuum out.

Then it was sit and read. This book is about a 66 year old female hiker on the Appalachian Trail. Geraldine Largay started the hike in April of 2013 with her friend Jane with husband George meeting them in the evenings to transport them somewhere to spend the night at motels along the way. The hikers were doing a flip-flop hike heading north from Harpers Ferry, Virginia to Mt Katahdin in Maine. After completing this northern route they would return to Harpers Ferry to hike the trail south to Springer Mountain in Georgia. Jane had an emergency at home so she left the trail but Geraldine and George decided she would continue since everything had gone so well so far. In this book the author is a credible search and rescue person as well as an expert wilderness guide. He documents how after hiking 900 miles, Geraldine steps off the trail to use the “facilities” and got disoriented and ultimately lost. A surveyor found her body in her sleeping bag two years later even though a mammoth search and rescue operation occurred. She was less than a half mile from the trail. I had the map book out so I could sort of see the area in Maine where she got lost.

I probably will be up tonight until I finish reading the whole book.


I would like to hike parts of the Appalachian Trail. The sections in North Carolina and western Virginia are not far from where my son lives. But I don’t think I would ever make this trek alone. I have read Jennifer Pharr Davis’s book as she was one of the first women to complete the 2100+ mile trail in record time. I also read Wild by Cheryl Strayed who hiked alone in the Pacific Coast Trail from Southern California to Canada. Another hiking book I loved was Grandma Gatewoods Walk, a 60 something year old woman who walked the entire trail in sneakers with only a shower curtain for rain gear.

These woman were amazing.