While Greg and I were in Amsterdam we stumbled upon Mendo, a self-described “candy store for book aficionados”. Travel books, home decorating books, photography books… it was a curated visual wonderland that we could have browsed for hours.
We grudgingly picked just one to bring home as a coffee table book. Eschewing the home decorating books that inspire envy or to-do lists, and the photography books that often contained a few nudes, we landed on a volume called Wanderlust by Cam Honan and Gestalten that photo-documents some of the best hiking trails in the world.
It’s epic.
In the forward Robert Moor cautions that this book is not intended to be a practical hiking guide. But rather it’s a “compendium of dream walks” that might inspire us to find trails closer to our own home. (Though, once the journey begins, who knows where it will end.)
We’ve explored many of the trails and paths in town, but this book reminds me that there are gorgeous, quiet, beautiful places nearby that we’ve never seen.
Some of my favorite running memories are places in nature I’ve visited that I otherwise wouldn’t have.
I glance over at my 5 and almost 7 year old and wonder how far we could get with a day-hiking guide to New England and a little bug spray.
Mountains? Waterfalls? Cliff views? Certainly some autumn foliage.
Might be worth finding out.
The writer of Wanderlust, Cam Honan, has been called “the most traveled hiker on earth” by Backpacker Magazine and has hiked in over 50 countries logging over 55,000 miles. I checked out his blog, The Hiking Life, and it’s a wealth of information for beginning and advanced hikers alike. Browse his resource guides if you’re inspired to plan your own hike!