A Walk in the Park

De: Kevin Fedarko

Narrado por: Kevin Fedarko

Duración: 14 h y 28 m

Resumen del Editor

From the author of the beloved bestseller The Emerald Mile comes a rollicking and poignant account of the epic misadventure of two friends, zero preparation, and one dream: a 750-mile odyssey, on foot, through the heart of America’s most magnificent national park and the grandest wilderness on earth.

A few years after quitting his job to follow an ill-advised dream of becoming a guide on the Colorado River, Kevin Fedarko was approached by his best friend, the National Geographic photographer Pete McBride, with a vision as bold as it was harebrained. Together, they would embark on an end-to-end traverse of the Grand Canyon, a journey that, McBride promised, would be “a walk in the park.” Against his better judgment, Fedarko agreed to the scheme, unaware that the small cluster of experts who had completed the crossing billed it as “the toughest hike in the world.”

The ensuing ordeal, which lasted more than a year, revealed a place that was deeper, richer, and far more complex than anything the two men had imagined—and came within a hair’s breadth of killing them both. They struggled to make their way through the all but impenetrable reaches of its truest wilderness, a vertical labyrinth of thousand-foot cliffs and crumbling ledges where water is measured out by the teaspoon and every step is fraught with peril—and where, even today, there is still no trail along the length of the country’s best-known and most iconic park.

Along the way, veteran long-distance hikers ushered them into secret pockets, invisible to the millions of tourists gathered on the rim, where only a handful of humans have ever laid eyes. Members of the canyon’s eleven Native American tribes brought them face-to-face with layers of history that forced them to reconsider myths at the center of our national parks—and exposed them to the impinging threats of commercial tourism. Even Fedarko’s dying father, who had first pointed him toward the canyon more than forty years earlier but had never set foot there himself, opened him to a new way of seeing the landscape.

And always, there was the great gorge itself: austere and unforgiving but suffused with magic, drenched in wonder, and redeemed by its own transcendent beauty.

A Walk in the Park is a singular portrait of a sublime place, and a deeply moving plea for the preservation of America’s greatest natural treasure.

©2024 Kevin Fedarko (P)2024 Simon & Schuster Audio

I so wanted to love this book but I just couldn’t.

I just got back from the Grand Canyon and I love non-fiction - especially accounts of adventures, which this story certainly is. The subject is right up my alley as is the genre. However (and for me, it’s a big one), the book is so over-written. Why use a familiar word when you can cram in lots of words that show off your vocabulary? Why use ten words when you can use 100? I really don’t know what the author was thinking but it seemed like literary boasting to me, like he’s saying, I will make my account as intellectual as possible to show you just how smart I am and far I had to stoop to actually go on this journey.

I seldom bail on a book but I did on this one, I wanted a fun romp and I got a plodding haul. Sure that haul is through one of the most beautiful places on earth but if the language is so overdone and high-falutin’ that the story no longer seems accessible, what’s the point?