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Recommended Reads: Hiking and camping
Follow the mountain path and find a comfortable spot at the campsite so you can enjoy these hiking and camping-themed Recommended Reads.
From easy forest strolls to challenging mountain climbs, there’s something for every interest and ability. The joys of hiking and camping come from the sensations of wild places: the sights, smells, sounds, and even tastes of the natural world. When we remove ourselves from concrete, plastic, and steel (and all those screens!), we recalibrate our desires and ambitions to align with something deeper than ourselves.
“The sign said:
LEAVE NO TRACE
but I couldn’t help
dropping on the trail
a few of my worries and anxieties.”
— Author unknown
Digital book (DB), braille (BR), large print (LT), and audio-described videos (DVD) copies of these titles are available from Perkins Library or the Worcester Talking Book Library. Please contact Perkins Library to order any of these books.
Prepared by Vicki Vogt, Registration Services Manager, Perkins Library
A Dog’s Courage
by W. Bruce Cameron
DB 103252, available as BARD download
Bella was once a lost dog, but now she lives happily with her people, Lucas and Olivia, only occasionally recalling the hardships in her past. A weekend camping trip turns into a struggle for survival when the Rocky Mountains are engulfed by wildfire. Sequel to A Dog’s Way Home (DB 88104). Unrated. Commercial audiobook. 2021.
A Fine and Pleasant Misery
by Patrick F. McManus
DB 15102, available as BARD download
Twenty-seven humorous sketches that originally appeared in “Field and Stream.” Dealing primarily with camping reminiscences, they poke fun at some of the author’s experiences with an inept, wacky hunting dog, intruding cows, and a national park. 1978.
A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail
by Bill Bryson
DB 46519, available as BARD download
Bryson relates the adventures and misadventures of two totally unfit hikers as he and longtime friend Stephen Katz traverse the 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail. Returning from more than twenty years in Britain, he set out to rediscover his homeland, but the two men find themselves awed by the terrain and stymied by the unfamiliar local culture. Some strong language. Bestseller. 1998.
Download A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail, DB 46519
Alone in the Wild
by Kelley Armstrong
DB 98597, BR 24699, LT 28397, available as BARD download
While on a much-needed camping vacation with her boyfriend, Sheriff Eric Dalton, Detective Casey Duncan hears a baby crying in the woods. The sound leads them to a tragic scene: a woman buried under the snow, murdered, a baby still alive in her arms. Unrated. Commercial audiobook. 2020.
Backpacking with the Saints: Wilderness Hiking as Spiritual Practice
by Belden C. Lane
DB 120169, available as BARD download
This title provides an account of solo wilderness backpacking as spiritual practice. On his solitary hikes, Belden Lane has as companions the great spiritual texts of the world’s religions. The wilderness, he argues, offers an enlightening approach to the texts, presenting the opportunity to explore the interior landscape and the spiritual realm of nature. 2019.
Download Backpacking with the Saints: Wilderness Hiking as Spiritual Practice, DB 120169
Black Mountain
by Les Standiford
DB 51530, available as BARD download
As a political reward, transit cop Richard Corrigan joins New York governor Fielding Dawson’s entourage on a camping trip in the Wyoming wilderness. Once there, accidents start occurring with deadly consequences until only three of the original party remain. Strong language and some violence. 2000.
Blood Lure
by Nevada Barr
DB 51690, BR 21603, available as BARD download
Park ranger Anna Pigeon travels to Montana’s Glacier National Park to study the DNA of grizzly bears. A bear attacks Anna’s tent on her first night out camping. On the way back to the base camp, she discovers a woman’s mutilated body. Some violence and some strong language. Bestseller. 2001.
Greenwood
by Michael Christie
DB 120111, available as BARD download
It is 2038. As the rest of humanity struggles through the environmental collapse known as the Great Withering, scientist Jake Greenwood is working as an overqualified tour guide on Greenwood Island, a remote oasis of thousand-year-old trees. Jake had thought the island’s connection to her family name just a coincidence, until someone from her past reappears with a book that might give her the family history she’s long craved. Unrated. Commercial audiobook. 2020.
Guardians of the Valley: John Muir and the Friendship That Saved Yosemite
by Dean King
DB 115179, available as BARD download
Upon their arrival at Yosemite Valley in 1889, environmentalist writer, John Muir, and his longtime editor, Robert Underwood Johnson, are confronted with a shocking vision, as predatory mining, tourism, and logging industries have plundered and defaced “the grandest of all the special temples of Nature.” While Muir is devastated, Johnson decides that he and Muir must fight back. The pact they form marks a watershed moment, leading to the creation of Yosemite National Park, and launching an environmental battle that captivates the nation and ushers in the beginning of the American environmental movement. 2023.
Download Guardians of the Valley: John Muir and the Friendship That Saved Yosemite, DB 115179
Heartbreaker
by Karen Robards
DB 47751, available as BARD download
Lynn Nelson, a Chicago anchorwoman, has planned a ten-day camping trip in Utah to bond with her teenage daughter, Rory. But their fall from a cliff is just the beginning of many nightmares they and their guide, the handsome Jess Feldman, must face. Strong language, some violence, and some explicit descriptions of sex. 1997.
How to Suffer Outside: A Beginner’s Guide to Hiking and Backpacking
by Diana Helmuth
DB 108207, available as BARD download
In this part humorous critique of modern hiking culture and part how-to guide, the author gives advice for novice hikers and backpackers. Each chapter focuses on a critical topic: gear, food, hygiene, clothing, and more, along with useful checklists and resources. Strong language. 2021.
Download How to Suffer Outside: A Beginner’s Guide to Hiking and Backpacking, DB 108207
I Am Behind You
by John Ajvide Lindqvist
DB 92668, available as BARD download
Four families on a camping trip wake up to find their world has been transformed. They must come to terms with what has happened and confront their deepest fears and secret desires as past events that each of them has tried to bury rise to the surface. Unrated. Commercial audiobook. 2018.
On the Narrow Road: Journey into a Lost Japan
by Lesley Downer
DB 31141, available as BARD download
On May 16, 1689, the Japanese poet Matsuo Basho started on a five-month journey into the wild country of northern Japan. Nearly 300 years later, the author, an English woman, retraced the footsteps of the revered poet. Traveling alone, walking and hitchhiking, she covered the 800 miles, meeting people who had never seen a Westerner, eating snakes and grasshoppers, and composing Haiku with local poets. 1989.
Download On the Narrow Road: Journey into a Lost Japan, DB 31141
Sleeping Bear
by Connor Sullivan
DB108828, LT30761, available as BARD download
After her young husband’s untimely death, Army veteran Cassie Gale decides to take a few days of solitude in the Alaskan wilderness before she starts her new job. But when she fails to show up on her first day and her dog is discovered injured at her wrecked campsite, her father knows that this is much more than a camping trip gone awry. As it turns out, Cassie’s not the first person to disappear without a trace in Alaska’s northern interior. Bears. Wolves. Avalanches. Frostbite. Starvation. There are many ways to die in here. But not all disappearances can be explained. Cassie’s is one of them, along with a number of other outdoor enthusiasts who have vanished in recent years. Regaining consciousness in a Russian prison, Cassie finds herself trapped in a system designed to ensure that no one ever escapes alive. It will require all her grit and skills to survive. Meanwhile, her father rushes to outrun the clock, scouring thousands of acres, only to realize she’s been taken by a nefarious adversary–one with the power of the Eastern Bloc behind it. Ties to his past life, one full of secrets, threaten to surface. He knows there’s a price to be paid, but he’s determined it won’t be his daughter. Unrated. Commercial audiobook. 2021.
Sugar Birds: A Novel
by Cheryl Bostrom
DB 109359, LT 35604, available as BARD download
Northwest Washington State, 1985. For years, Harris Hayes has taught his daughter, Aggie, the ways of the northern woods, where she sketches nests of wild birds as an antidote to sadness. Then her depressed, unpredictable mother forbids her to climb the trees that give her sanctuary and comfort. Angry, 10-year-old Aggie accidentally lights a tragic fire and flees downriver. She lands her boat near untamed forest, then hides among trees and creatures she believes are her only friends–determined to remain undiscovered. A search party gathers hours after Celia arrives at her grandmother’s nearby farm. Hurting from her parents’ breakup, she also plans to run. But when she joins the hunt for Aggie, she meets two irresistible young men who compel her to stay. One is autistic; the other, dangerous. Unrated. Commercial audiobook. 2021.
Suicide Forest
by Jeremy Bates
DB 109281, available as BARD download
Just outside of Tokyo lies Aokigahara, a vast forest and one of the most beautiful wilderness areas in Japan and also the most infamous spot to commit suicide in the world. Legend has it that the spirits of those many suicides are still roaming, haunting deep in the ancient woods. When bad weather prevents a group of friends from climbing neighboring Mt. Fuji, they decide to spend the night camping in Aokigahara. But they get more than they bargained for when one of them is found hanged in the morning–and they realize there might be some truth to the legends after all. Unrated. Commercial audiobook. 2019.
The Conviction
by Robert Dugoni
DB 99311, available as BARD download
When David Sloane takes his troubled sixteen-year-old stepson Jake on a camping trip with a cop friend and his son, the boys get arrested. They are sent to a wilderness detention facility without a trial and begin a nightmarish sentence. Violence, strong language, and some explicit descriptions of sex. 2012.
The Walk
by Richard Paul Evans
DB 71348, BR 19058, LT 10828, available as BARD download
Seattle advertising executive Alan Christoffersen has everything–until his beloved wife dies, his business partner steals their clients, and his house is repossessed. Alan decides to walk across America to Key West, Florida, in search of new meaning while keeping a journal and befriending people along the way. 2010.
This Time: New and Selected Poems
by Gerald Stern
DB 49884, available as BARD download
In the tradition of Walt Whitman, a poet describes his impressions formed during lengthy perambulations. In “Here I Am Walking” he meditates as he strolls along New Jersey beaches, taking only simple fare, savoring the seashore, and musing on his past life and lost dreams. 1998.
Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)
by Jerome K. Jerome
DB 66776, available as BARD download
Tale of three overworked Englishmen who take a boating holiday on the Thames. George, William, and the narrator–accompanied by Montmorency, the dog–anticipate the joys of long, lazy summer days but instead face uncooperative camping equipment, inclement weather, rampant hypochondria, and other disasters. 1889. 2006.
Download Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), DB 66776
Under the Stars: How America Fell in Love with Camping
by Dan White
DB 109779, available as BARD download
From the High Sierra to the Adirondacks and the Everglades, Dan White travels the nation to experience firsthand–and sometimes face first–how the American wilderness transformed from the devil’s playground into a source of adventure, relaxation, and renewal. Whether he’s camping nude in cougar country, being attacked by wildlife while “glamping,” or crashing a girls-only adventure for urban teens, White seeks to animate the evolution of outdoor recreation. In the process, he demonstrates how the likes of Emerson, Thoreau, Roosevelt, and Muir–along with visionaries such as Adirondack Murray, Horace Kephart, and Juliette Gordon Low–helped blaze a trail from Transcendentalism to Leave No Trace. Wide-ranging in research, enthusiasm, and geography, Under the Stars reveals a vast population of nature seekers, a country still in love with its wild places. 2016.
Download Under the Stars: How America Fell in Love with Camping, DB 109779
Walking Home: A Poet’s Journey
by Simon Armitage
DB 76251, available as BARD download
British poetry professor relates his 2010 trek down the Pennine Way–the English equivalent of the Appalachian Trail that runs from the Scottish Borders to the English Midlands. He walked from north to south, giving a poetry reading most nights in exchange for room and board. Some poems included. 2012.
Walking the Gobi: A 1,600-Mile Trek Across a Desert of Hope and Despair
by Helen Thayer
DB 69721, Available as BARD Download
New Zealand adventurer details the fulfillment of her fifty-year-old dream at age sixty-three. Describes spending eighty-one often-grueling days walking across the Mongolian Gobi Desert with her husband and two camels–after five years of planning and despite injuries from a car accident. 2007.
Download Walking the Gobi: A 1,600-Mile Trek Across a Desert of Hope and Despair, DB 69721
We Are the Light: A Novel
by Matthew Quick
DB 111600, LT 32699, available as BARD download
Lucas Goodgame lives in Majestic, Pennsylvania, a quaint suburb that has been torn apart by a recent tragedy. Everyone in Majestic sees Lucas as a hero–everyone, that is, except Lucas himself. Insisting that his deceased wife, Darcy, visits him every night in the form of an angel, Lucas spends his time writing letters to his former Jungian analyst, Karl. It is only when Eli, an eighteen-year-old young man whom the community has ostracized, begins camping out in Lucas’s backyard that an unlikely alliance takes shape and the two embark on a journey to heal their neighbors and, most importantly, themselves. Unrated. Commercial audiobook. 2022.
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