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Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart
- An Adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail
- Narrated by: Erin Spencer
- Length: 14 hrs and 21 mins
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Publisher's summary
Carrot Quinn fears that she's become addicted to the Internet. The city makes her numb, and she's having trouble connecting with others. In a desperate move, she breaks away from everything to walk 2,660 miles from Mexico to Canada on the Pacific Crest Trail. It will be her first long-distance hike.
In the desert of Southern California, Carrot faces many challenges, both physical and emotional: pain, injury, blisters, aching cold and searing heat, dehydration, exhaustion, loneliness. In the wilderness she happens upon and becomes close with an eclectic group of strangers - people she wouldn't have chanced to meet in the "regular world" but who are brought together, here on the trail, by their one common goal: to make it to Canada before the snow flies.
Featured Article: The Best Hiking Audiobooks
Hiking is a time-honored way to appreciate and learn about nature while improving your physical and mental health. But even if you can't get out on the trail yourself at the moment, these hiking audiobooks will give you a greater appreciation for the sport. Hiking's broad appeal and long history have formed the basis of many compelling works of nonfiction. They run the gamut from intense stories of survival and perseverance to gentle explorations of the healing power of nature. Each of these hiking audiobooks is perfect whether you are out on a hike or sitting behind the wheel of a car.
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Story
Just before her 40th birthday, Gail Francis quit her perfectly good job and set out to hike one of the great trails of the world. Carrying everything she needed on her back, Francis spent five months walking from Mexico to Canada along the Pacific Crest Trail. Along the way, she lost her pack scrambling over scree in the desert, struggled to navigate high mountain passes, and wore the soles off her boots trekking across lava fields - all within some of the most pristine wilderness in the nation. Though she set out alone, her story includes an eclectic cast of characters.
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Bummer
- By CHRISTOPHER on 03-14-19
By: Gail M. Francis
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Only When I Step on It
- One Man's Inspiring Journey to Hike the Appalachian Trail Alone
- By: Peter E. Conti
- Narrated by: Peter E. Conti
- Length: 10 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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It was 23 months after his accident, and Peter was still dealing with constant excruciating pain. He'd seen dozens of doctors and tried a myriad of medications, but nothing seemed to work. Faced with the impossible choice of suffering through the rest of his life, he had an unlikely epiphany, "If I could somehow hike 2,000 miles on the Appalachian Trail, then my leg will have to be better." He set a starting date three weeks out, cobbled together a novice's pack, and set off on a journey destined to change his life forever—though not exactly how he had envisioned it.
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Inspiring story
- By D Williams on 05-29-22
By: Peter E. Conti
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Where's the Next Shelter?
- By: Gary Sizer
- Narrated by: Gary Sizer
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Where's the Next Shelter? is the true story of three travelers on the Appalachian Trail, a 2,000-mile hike that stretches from Georgia to Maine, told from the perspective of Gary Sizer, a seasoned backpacker and former marine who quickly finds himself humbled by the endeavor. If you long for the horizon or to sleep under the stars, then come along for the hike of a lifetime. All you have to do is take the first step.
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If You Liked AWOL, You'll Like This
- By Rebecca on 06-02-16
By: Gary Sizer
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The Trail
- A Novel
- By: Ethan Gallogly
- Narrated by: Jake Hunsbusher
- Length: 16 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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The Trail is a moving story of how nature helps us find what’s missing in our lives. The tale begins with Gil, who in the wake of his father’s death and recently fired from his job, agrees to accompany his father’s old hiking partner Syd on a month-long trek on the John Muir Trail. There’s just one problem: Gil hates camping and is woefully unprepared for the rigors of the journey. Moreover, he soon learns Syd may not survive the hike.
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Audible version - excellent!
- By JocelynF on 02-24-22
By: Ethan Gallogly
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The Trail Provides
- A Boy's Memoir of Thru-Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail
- By: David Smart
- Narrated by: David Smart
- Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Disillusioned by the corporate lifestyle, David finds himself unemployed and desperate for change. Bradley, his older, more adventurous, and slightly-wreckless college fraternity brother presents an enticing offer. Just a few weeks later, the two inexperienced hopefuls abandon society and plunge into a soul-searching sojourn to thru-hike the Pacific Crest trail, a 2,650-mile Mexico-to-Canada footpath - barefoot. At the trail’s mercy from day one, the two hikers face the endless pains of walking, rising tensions, and falling behind to the coming winter.
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Good Story
- By Zach mielens on 01-02-20
By: David Smart
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Hiking Through
- One Man's Journey to Peace and Freedom on the Appalachian Trail
- By: Paul Stutzman
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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After Paul Stutzman lost his wife to breast cancer, he sensed a tug on his heart - the call to a challenge, the call to pursue a dream. With a mixture of dread and determination, Paul left his job, traveled to Georgia, and took his first steps on the Appalachian Trail. What he learned during the next four and a half months changed his life and can change yours as well. In Hiking Through, you'll join Paul on his remarkable 2,176-mile trip through 14 states in search of peace and a renewed sense of purpose.
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Interesting
- By Max on 03-08-16
By: Paul Stutzman
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Becoming Odyssa
- Adventures on the Appalachian Trail
- By: Jennifer Pharr Davis
- Narrated by: Jennifer Pharr Davis
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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After graduating from college, Jennifer isn't sure what she wants to do with her life. She is drawn to the Appalachian Trail, a 2,175-mile footpath that stretches from Georgia to Maine. Though her friends and family think she's crazy, she sets out alone to hike the trail, hoping it will give her time to think about what she wants to do next. The next four months are the most physically and emotionally challenging of her life.
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Just read WILD again.
- By Candice Philpot on 10-02-20
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Wild
- From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
- By: Cheryl Strayed
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 13 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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At 22, 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: to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State - and to do it alone. She had no experience as a long-distance hiker, and the trail was little more than “an idea, vague and outlandish and full of promise.” But it was a promise of piecing back together a life that had come undone.
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Glad I Took the Trip
- By FanB14 on 04-08-13
By: Cheryl Strayed
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How to Hike the Appalachian Trail
- A Comprehensive Guide to Plan and Prepare for a Successful Thru-Hike
- By: Chris Cage
- Narrated by: John E Broussard
- Length: 5 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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If you are planning on (or just thinking about) hiking the Appalachian Trail, this book is for you. Planning an Appalachian Trail thru-hike is overwhelming. I know. I spent months researching every question I could think of before starting the six-month journey. Even after all of that research, there were countless mistakes I made. This book is everything I wish I would have known before starting. Inside is a step-by-step guide to efficiently plan for a successful thru-hike. Complete with personal tips and experiences.
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Exactly what’s missing from all the personal hiking account stories
- By Tracy Anne Buro on 04-12-18
By: Chris Cage
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Walking to Listen
- 4,000 Miles Across America, One Story at a Time
- By: Andrew Forsthoefel
- Narrated by: Andrew Forsthoefel
- Length: 13 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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At 23, Andrew Forsthoefel headed out the back door of his home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, with a backpack, an audio recorder, his copies of Whitman and Rilke, and a sign that read "Walking to Listen". He had just graduated from Middlebury College and was ready to begin his adult life, but he didn't know how. So he decided to take a cross-country quest for guidance, one where everyone he met would be his guide. In the year that followed, he faced an Appalachian winter and a Mojave summer. He met beasts inside: fear, loneliness, doubt.
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Transcends the typical trekking story
- By barefoot rabbit on 08-07-18
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Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail: Mexico to Canada
- By: Bruce Nelson
- Narrated by: Bruce "Buck" Nelson
- Length: 6 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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One April morning I left the Mexico border and walked north on the Pacific Crest Trail. For five months I hiked through the California desert, the snows of the Sierra Nevada, and the Cascade Mountains of Oregon and Washington. My goal was to succeed in an epic challenge: to hike 2,650 miles and reach Canada before the October snows.
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Trail journal published for money...
- By Ronda on 07-04-19
By: Bruce Nelson
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Balancing on Blue
- By: Keith Foskett
- Narrated by: Adam Stubbs
- Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Keith Foskett’s dream of escape started with a single step. When the long-distance hiker chose to backpack all 2,180 miles of the Appalachian Trail, he left ordinary life behind for five months. Enduring an incredible test of physical and psychological strength, Foskett was pushed to his limits....
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Another great adventure!
- By Jim Lewis on 02-20-21
By: Keith Foskett
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The Sunset Route
- Freight Trains, Forgiveness, and Freedom on the Rails in the American West
- By: Carrot Quinn
- Narrated by: Erin Spencer
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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After a childhood marked by neglect, poverty, and periods of homelessness, with a mother who believed herself to be the reincarnation of the Virgin Mary, Carrot Quinn moved out on her own. She found a sense of belonging among straight-edge anarchists who taught her how to traverse the country by freight trains, sleep in fields under the stars, and feed herself by foraging in dumpsters. Her new life was one of thrilling adventure and freedom, but still she was haunted by the ghosts of her lonely and traumatic childhood.
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Difficult to stop listening
- By Tim Behle on 07-18-22
By: Carrot Quinn
What listeners say about Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Anonymous User
- 12-20-17
Like an infinity of switchbacks...it just never ended
Recently I hiked Mt. Whitney. They call the descent from the saddle “The 99 switchbacks” because it’s a seemingly endless back and forth and back and forth, while the valley below seems impossibly out of reach-never getting closer no matter how long I walked. That’s what this book felt like. There was no story, just a series of narration about what Carrot ate, how well or badly she slept, and how she felt about whatever sexual entanglement was occupying her mind. And every time I checked the remaining time,
the end was nowhere near.
And it felt...dishonest, in a way. The author talked a lot about eating ice cream and hamburgers...then in a later chapter reveals that she’s lactose intolerant and has issues with gluten so if she ate like that she’d be dooming herself to days of diarrhea. Tough to buy that she’s going to hike long distance in that conditions. She didn’t have long pants and only wore shorts...but talks about being in extreme cold...says she read all the right books but seems to be surprised by each mishap...”what is Hiker heaven...I didn’t even know” is the kind of pretentious wide eyed innocence that shows up throughout and rings...if not false...at least disingenuous.
I’ve never read a book about hiking that made me less interested in experiencing a similar trek or “nope”ing so hard at the idea of traveling with the author. When she’s with people, she loves them until she can’t stand them...then misses them on the trail (all within about 24 hours from meeting them). She manages to get into a cutesy lesbian thing with another hiker but trades snowflake-experiencing-Tinder level sexting when they’re apart on the trail and the other woman is flirting with a different hiker...and telling her about it. It’s like reading every cliche about millennials and their inability to disconnect, FOMO and general angst, but applied to a 2600 mile hike to Canada.
Bottom line: I called in evac and bailed with about 1/3 of the book left. I’d rather re-listen to Wild for the 10th time than hear the minutiae of another day of “I’m starving...I ate too much...I’m lonely...I hate people” angsty day on the PCT.
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43 people found this helpful
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- Beth E.
- 06-05-16
Fresh and surprising thru-hikealog
After finishing this book, I found I craved the narrator's voice and being on the trail with Carrot, so I started listening again. It's become the backdrop for life these days, and I listen as I drive, as I lay down to sleep, whenever I want to escape to the trail. It has re-opened the world of thru hiking for me just when I needed it! PCT '85
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29 people found this helpful
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- Ara Roselani
- 07-29-16
Compelling, even if you'll never hike the PCT
I'll never climb Everest, but I read everything I can about it. I'll likely never hike the PCT, but I love stories about people who do. Carrot's book is so immersive, so wonderful, so occasionally mundane in the matters of food and water and clothing--it made me very happy.
In contrast to Wild, I feel this book is much more about the daily journey of the trail--what it's like to walk the whole thing. What it's like to fall in love with it. What a largely free heart feels in such a place. I love her humor, her despair, her overwhelming joy, her change as the miles fly by. Unlike some other reviewers, I don't find the bits about intimacy with other hikers troubling or annoying. It all seems very genuine and real and isn't overdone, or overly focused upon. It's simply part of her journey. And, more importantly, her.
Highly recommended. Thank you, Carrot, for sharing your marvelous journey. Please write more!
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27 people found this helpful
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- LW09
- 04-10-17
Strong start...underwhelming finish
Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?
I enjoyed the first half of this book, experiencing the day-to-day struggles of the trail with Carrot. But, lost interest when it became mostly about her immature romance. Some of the dialogue was pretty cringeworthy.
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23 people found this helpful
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- Joe Doro
- 02-02-17
Walk,sleep,tired,happy,hungry,pain -- then repeat
What would have made Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart better?
Unlike most other adventure books this story concentrates only on what the author was thinking while walking during this long hike.
I lasted through the first thousand miles hoping that something would happen. But nothing does. It's almost like Groundhog Day, the same thing over and over again. How many times does one have to hear about the questioning as to whether enough food is being carried?
For example,we never learn anything of significance about the people that are encountered along the way other than for some very superficial stuff. Did we ever learn why any of them were hiking? As for the trail angels, why do they do what they do? There is never any discussion of the different areas that are traversed other than to offer a physical description. No history, no explanation as to why the geography is the way it is, nothing about the indigenous people, and in fact no explanation as to what the PCT is or why it's there.
Whenever there was an opportunity, and there were many, to talk about anything but herself, that path was not followed which really made the book boring for me.
Overall, I felt like I was listening to someone read from their Franklin Planner.
What was most disappointing about Carrot Quinn’s story?
nothing happened.
What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?
Not much. Very benign.
What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?
Boredom
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22 people found this helpful
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- book worm
- 06-29-16
More of diary than travelogue
Any additional comments?
Of the 3 thru hiking books I've read, this one is in third place. In first place would be Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, and in second place AWOL on the Appalachian Trail. I never really got used to the "valley girl" accent of the narrator of Thru Hiking will break your heart. Putting an extra drawn out syllable on a one syllable word, kind of a teenager's voice. But much of the book was detailing the junk food eating at each stop, the motels, foot problems, pretty much any reason not to have to sleep on the trail. But I listened to the whole thing, and I disagree with other reviews that said there was "too much sex in it", there wasn't, just that a couple of girls shared a tent once in awhile and a hug. The rest was left to imagination. I want to be fair to this book because I recognize the effort and the accomplishment of the thru hiking, just that from my point of view I was interested more in accounts of nature, not just that everything looked "green", or was desert, etc. This was more of a diary with how many miles, what food eaten, where night was spent, restaurants visited, and about collecting boxes of food and equipment she had shipped ahead to various towns. I just did not get a feel of nature from this account.
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16 people found this helpful
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- Angelina
- 11-25-16
My Heart is Only a Little Broken
I had a good time listening to this book while I do my farm work. I enjoyed the voice actor. I sometimes became annoyed by Carrots hippie platitudes left and right.. her repetiative questions like "where am i" and "what am i doing"... but I like that she's a queer punk feminist who makes her politics known in her book. I'm glad she talked about the interpersonal bonds, the friendships and the romantic connections she made on the trail. Being a young queer woman interested in thru hiking that accidentally picked out a book written by a queer woman, based on the cover alone made me feel like it was destiny.. However, I had some dissapointments to face. I found the most serious love interest (a man) to be very boring and that was a let down for me. But I get that being queer means falling for dudes sometimes... I guess.
I especially enjoyed and appreciated the occasional moments of true vulnerability she showed when she talked about her childhood and things like that. I wish there had been more like that.
Overall I feel that I understand more about what the hike will be like. I enjoyed the vivid descriptions of the trail and the weather and the struggle.
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8 people found this helpful
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- Michelle
- 03-15-17
A Diary from the Trail
Would you consider the audio edition of Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart to be better than the print version?
The narrator brought life to the words that I cannot imagine would have been the same in my head had I read the print version. She was sincere and inquisitive as I imagine Carrot to be.
What was one of the most memorable moments of Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart?
It is easy to focus a lot on the brief romances Carrot has while on the trail, they are exciting and leave you with many questions. But this is not a story about finding romance, it is a story about figuring out one's self when taken out of the every day. The part of the story that stuck with me the most is the friendships she developed with Spark and Instigate. Learning how Carrot handled various illnesses and ailments while on the trail was also an intriguing part of the story. Her trip to the dentist and to the doctor for antibiotics really put things into perspective how out of the normal every day American routine she was on the trail.
If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?
The title is a perfect tagline for this book.
Any additional comments?
The book changes tone about half-way through. This is because the "book" was originally written as a blog. With half of that blog being written on the trail. The latter part of the book was written after Carrot had completed the PCT. Because of this, there is a shift from focusing on gear and blisters, to more thoughtful quiet moments that include Carrot's reflections on her own childhood- surely inspired and in sync with her thoughts on the trail.
This book is a gift. I have never thru-hiked myself but am attracted to stories where people step out of the every day routine. It is written like a diary and Carrot really brings you into her world and to the trail with her words. I followed along on her blog that still includes pictures from the trail while I listened to the book. I highly recommend.
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7 people found this helpful
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- digger
- 10-23-17
Self involved, made me want to jump in front of a bus
Overhyped crap. We get it, you are a lesbian living in the Pacific Northwest. Surprisingly, the hiking bits were not all that interesting. The narrator is highly unlikeable, which isn't always a bad thing. Cheryl Strayed was certainly unlikeable in Wild, yet her story was compelling. Yes, thruhiking will break your heart, but this was a huge ego trip. I say no on this one.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Kathryn
- 08-12-16
wondrous
thank you, Carrot, for carrying me and your readers on your journey, and for sharing your heart so fully. and thank you, Erin, for being such a soulful and solid conveyance of Carrot's experience as reader. Carrot, my reluctance to read the story of someone so different in age and in so many ways dissipated as your writing drew me in to remember all that binds us. I greatly appreciated your sharing of your shifting emotions and thoughts and your hunger, your, solutions, and your missteps. i was constantly rewinding so as to miss no detail. i hope this book sells well for you, Carrot. you are such a fine raconteur. I listened to the story in my car and on planes. i started to feel like I was right with you. i found myself searching for trail food in grocery stores and shivering when you were cold. i wanted to spirit you off to a physician so many times to fix your ailments. we readers/listners have you and Erin to thank for enveloping us all on that PCT ribbon of land. Please write, Carrot; write more. i so wish you well.
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5 people found this helpful