[pct-l] Intro/Book Review - Walking Down a Dream

[boliviahike at hotmail.com (Trek 2000)]

Hello, I like these introductions, it's great to hear everyone's enthusiasm 
for hiking and the PCT.
I said I would post this review awhile back but never got round to it, so by 
way of introduction here it is, this was also in the most recent edition of 
the Communicator. The book is available on Amazon.

Walking Down a Dream - Book Review by Brett Tucker

"Stuffy.” My computer’s dictionary offers the following definitions: 
“lacking fresh air; excessively conventional and unimaginative and hence 
dull.”

Free software as it is, the dictionary fails to provide antonyms. However if 
I were its editor, I’d offer two: “the Pacific Crest Trail and “a new book 
by Natasha Carver.” The PCT, with its inspiring mountain air and human 
legacy of bold, creative conservation, is America’s answer to the woes of 
stuffiness. And Britain’s latest answer? Natasha Carver’s new book about her 
2000 through-hike.

“Walking Down a Dream” is the self-told story of a young woman’s journey 
from Mexico to Canada on foot. Presented in the style of a trail journal, 
the book is based largely on the author’s observations and impressions 
during her 5½ month through-hike of the PCT. Natasha comes to the trail 
inexperienced at long-distance hiking, but with a great enthusiasm for 
wilderness adventures. Open-minded and unconventional, she finds herself 
drifting from the safe harbor of her home in England, finally running 
aground in Campo, California, at the southern terminus of the PCT. Walking 
with her is a like-minded twenty-something named Kris.

Almost from the first mile the two hikers experience friction. The hot, 
dusty trail takes its toll on their untested feet, and soon blisters and 
other troubles emerge, including snakes and skin-piercing cactus spines. 
Then, on Day 11 of the journey, Natasha writes, “Kris has a strained tendon 
in her ankle. Heel to be precise. ‘Don’t think about it and it will go 
away,’ is my best advice. Shrewdly, she’s not really paying this much 
attention and is bandaging it.” A rift slowly forms between the two 
protagonists, ostensibly from the newfound discrepancy in their abilities; 
Kris’ condition, though not debilitating, nonetheless demands a 
slower-than-expected pace, jeopardizing their carefully scheduled trip. 
Natasha is driven to succeed and her sharp wit and wry humor seem to offer 
Kris inadequate consolation. Ultimately Kris opts to return home, and 
following an emotional parting Natasha continues her hike.

“The last few days I have been traveling with Hobbit,” she later writes. 
“Hobbit saw me in my bug cocoon and said, ‘It’s a butterfly about to 
emerge!’ And hence I am now named Chrysalis.” Natasha’s new trail name is 
apt, for the author undergoes an intriguing transformation in the second 
half of her story. In many ways her separation from Kris, the hike’s 
organizer and voice of experience, allows Natasha’s true personality to 
emerge. The results are often comedic and always entertaining. For one 
Natasha now uses only Tyvec house-wrap for shelter, sandwiching herself into 
it at night, burrito-style. And, when she misplaces her trousers and 
bug-repellent, she must tackle the mosquito-plagued high country, sans DEET 
and wearing shorts, simultaneously running and swatting to keep sane.

Young and unattached, she finds herself on the lonely trail, “ensconced in 
the delicate art of flirting by e-mail” with a would-be boyfriend from Los 
Angeles, when suddenly she stares up from her pocket-sized gadget to find a 
bear snuffling close by—her first ever bruin sighting. In turn she becomes 
the reluctant object of male hikers’ attention. “In between the pants for 
breath, while I speed-walk up the hill, he struggles to declare his undying 
love.” But Natasha emerges unscathed, eventually falling into a co-ed group 
called “the Wolf Pack,” the members of which form an inseparable bond after 
finding themselves in the midst of a high-stakes wilderness rescue in cold, 
rainy Washington.

An “actress of sorts” in her pre-trail life, Natasha is a keen storyteller 
who takes full literary advantage of her hiking naivety. She is a stage, 
acted upon by serendipitous events. She is also a historian, enriching her 
chronicle with well-researched tangents ranging from the plight of displaced 
Native cultures (victims of progress and gold) to the blight of a once green 
and fertile Owens Valley (victim of progress and thirst).

Whether you are a veteran PCTer or a prospective through-hiker, you will 
discover much in this book that hasn’t been written about before. And 
certainly, if you are familiar with long-distance hiking, you’ll smile in 
recognition as Chrysalis relates her rites-of-passage.

In the end, it is fitting that “Walking Down a Dream” should come to us from 
Great Britain. Natasha Carver delivers the kind of awe, honesty, and pointed 
humor that only an outsider could muster. “Imagine coming from the grime of 
wet cold industrial London to this paradise,” she writes. “The mountain air 
gives you a wash of euphoria.”

Blisterfree has hiked the full length of the Appalachian and Pacific Crest 
trails, and met Natasha on the PCT in northern California during their 
respective hikes in 2000.

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