Back in Paperback, with a new afterword by the author Of the thru-hikers who set out to walk the entire Appalachian Trail, most don t make it. Robert Rubin s chances didn t look good. Thirty-eight years old, dispirited, and burned out by a job he no longer loved, he decided to leave mortgage and wife and cul-de-sac life behind for a journey that could take half a year or perhaps never end. On the trail s wooded ridges, Rubin found himself part of a strange vagrant culture of pilgrims and dropouts, a world with its own rules and rituals. With eloquence and humor, he recounts his trek the...