Introducing New MSI Press Affiliated Book: Walks Far Man: In Step with History on the Pacific Crest Trail (Ostdick)





Book description: Posing for a picture at the southern terminus of the Pacific Crest Trail, a long-eared jackrabbit hop from Mexico and 2,650-some miles from Canada, your stomach churns and your mind reels. The air is dusty. A morning desert wind feels oddly cold. No amount of preparation is sufficient for the starkness of your decision. In this beginning, something has ended. Something practiced and old and broken-in has faded. In its place enters immediacy and relevance and sharp possibility. Plans and spreadsheets become paper prayer flags fluttering in a past mind, useless tributes to linear pretense. You catch yourself thinking that it feels like the first day of school. But there are no teachers, no classmates, no classrooms, no halls, and no walls. There is only one choice that yields results: to turn and to walk, to follow the well-worn trail North. With each step, you lose a little more of the other-world, the un-PCT. All you have is what you need. All you need is what you have. Here-now is all there is and this here-now is insanely fun.


Review from MSI Press editor:

The Powerful Narrative of Walks Far Man Won't Let You Walk Away without Finishing it

As someone who shared vicariously in the 1000-mile trek taken by my husband and son along the Appalachian Trail years ago, I found Jim Ostdick's book first-rate. The tips to hikers, if taken to heart, will bring meaningful hiking experiences. The book is much more than a trail description and hiker’s guide, however. Historians and anthropologists will find rare details, impeccable research, highly useful references, and unusually rich cultural descriptions from Ostdick’s deep dive into the native-populations’ worlds through which he walked with reverence, if not love. Well written by a master story teller, compelling turns of phrase and a colloquial style pull the reader into the narrative and won’t let go until the story is finished—a story that combines land and people, history and philosophy, and spirituality into a mathemagenic tome that both entertains and provokes deep thought and rumination. 
A shout-out to the artist for a beautiful cover design.



This book has received 28 reviews, all 5-star. You can read the reviews and purchase the book on AMAZON.



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