On the Beaten Path

<DIV><DIV><DIV><P><B>Back in Paperback </B></P><P><B>with a new afterword by the author</B></P></DIV><P>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 people he met the landscapes he passed through the spiritual and physical endurance involved (despite a diet heavy in Snickers bars and macaroni & cheese he lost seventy-five pounds along the way). <I>On the Beaten Path</I> is a wise witty look at one of the few remaining pilgrimages in our disillusioned age. </P></DIV></DIV>