[at-l] 9/10/99 Trailplace A.T. Bibliography News

[Linda Patton <lpatton@mailer.fsu.edu>]

Greetings from Ol' Earthworm!

Hi there, hikers!!  I'm here to announce another good AT book just added
to the AT Bibliography at Trailplace.com.  Hope you get it, read it, and
enjoy it as much as I did. -- — Earthworm

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THE WILD BIRDS' SONG: HIKING SOUTH ON THE APPALACHIAN TRAIL
by Jim Coplen
American Bison Publishing Company, P.O. Box 6784, South Bend IN 46660-6784
(219-243-9078)
1998, 183 pp., illus. (colored photographs), ISBN 0966713702, $14.95
(paperback)

Jim "Six-Iron" Coplen thruhiked the AT in 1995-96 using a golf club for a
hiking pole.  He was 58 years old when he left his job as a newspaper
editor and journalist in Indiana in February 1995.  He needed some time to
plan his hike, so he decided to hike southbound starting later that same
year.  He had just over 330 miles to go to finish at Springer when he
fractured his fibula just above the ankle by turning his ankle on a root
hidden by leaves.  He went home and let it heal; then continued in April
1996 at Spivey Gap, Tennessee where he'd limped off the year before, and
finished up in May.

Of course, anyone contemplating a southbound hike might enjoy this book as
it will give them a feel for what it's like.  And older hikers may have
some interest in the book.  Those wondering how to handle an injury might
be curious, too.  But everyone who loves trail stories will certainly
enjoy this book.  Jim's experience as a journalist shows up in the
wonderful writing.  Here are some samples:

On why we hike: "I sometimes wailed at a mountain when the climb seemed
never to end, or a shelter I looked for at the end of a long day was still
a mile or two away.  But my outlook changed when I stood above clouds in
sunlight, crossed streams that cascaded down mountainsides, or considered
life without ever having walked the trail."

On beauty: "We stood at cliff's edge, all of us a long way from home,
surrounded by a new reality, and watched a falling sun light the final
patch of sky like a million campfires slowly dying."

On Trail change: "Though I had hardly begun it seemed my whole life had
been lived on the trail, or maybe I had simply been reborn there."

And many thruhikers will identify with the end of the story: "I'd
strangely feel no sense of completion.  That lack of closure would haunt
me until I began to understand the gift: that if the trail never ended in
spirit then I could perhaps retain all the journey had given me.
Inevitably, I believe, all who walk the length of the trail must
change...The Trail is just that--only a trail.  It was the journey that
mattered and I think of it nearly every day."
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Linda L. Patton, Reference Librarian, Strozier Library, Florida State Univ.
      Tallahassee, FL 32306-2047 (850)644-5019 lpatton@mailer.fsu.edu
          "A world without wilderness is a cage." -- David Brower
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