Only On Foot

 "Only on foot, the slowest and hardest way to move, can you hope to make contact with the finest parts of this landscape."

My dad was an avid kayaker; I'm no expert in his chronology or the sport itself, but I think you'd call him something of a semi-pro. He won races, made it into articles, had sponsors (or just brand deals?), and even came close to qualifying for the Olympics. He competed in slalom racing and was a fanatic for white water. One trip he always said I needed to try and make was the Grand Canyon river trip he would do once a year.

He was obsessed with this place, often would show us videos or photo slideshows of him there, tell us all about setting up camp, the dangers and beauty of the canyon, etc. I knew my dad later in life, but he made sure I knew his love of the Grand Canyon. I have never managed to make it out there, but I've always felt a secondhand appreciation for the place, if only because I knew what it meant to him and what he meant to me.

So many years later and I'm at the bookstore buying a book for my daughter, and I notice A Walk in the Park by Kevin Fedarko sitting up at the front counter on display. It's a pretty book, cool watercolor-like cover adorned with multiple outdoor writing awards. I grabbed it on a whim; the checkout clerk mentioned she was "also intrigued by that one".

While I love the outdoors - climbing, hiking, backpacking, camping, biking, etc.- I'm admittedly a stranger when it comes to outdoor books or even writing in general. Reading even some of the most harrowing adventures in, say, Outdoor Magazine feels like it's occurring in the background of my mind, like when you visit someone's house and they have golf on. It's not that the writing is particularly bad, but WATCHING outdoor sports already challenges me because it's hard to transport myself into such insular, personal moments that the athletes are experiencing; READING these things is even harder.

Which is why when I first cracked open Fedarko's A Walk in the Park, my first thought was "oh shit, this dude can actually write". Even from just the intro, it's clear Fedarko can compose; he strings heavy description together with poetic language and technical writing about the landscape itself. It's clear he's spent a lot of time in the canyon, but also painstakingly researching the geological and biological components at a deeper level. Which is fitting, because knowing your landscape is sort of the moral of this story.

Fedarko is at his best writing about how he and his photographer counterpart Pete begin their journey in the canyon doing a thru-hike: getting their asses royally handed to them. This section was almost impossible to put down at times. I was physically cringing as Fedarko and Pete refuse to bail, refuse to see the reality of their own inexperience, and ultimately ruin the experience of a lifetime with some other hikers they barnacled onto. Fedarko proves he can transport the reader; the intensity of the heat shines through the pages, the dehydration (my mouth got dry at times just reading this), the blisters on his feet. The section interestingly focuses entirely on their experience and their fatigue and almost nothing about the storied land they're walking on. 

The book sees Fedarko and Pete return to the canyon several more times. The journey unravels to explore the flora and fauna, the paradox of tourism vs ecological preservation, the native peoples who live or have lived there, the many other pioneers and hikers who have paved the way for their journey. As Fedarko learns to look around and learn the environment and the history, his hiking acumen and skills also grow, as does his love for the natural world he's inhabiting. Each trip back to the canyon focuses less on themselves (Pete and Fedarko) and more on a painstaking re-telling of every view behind each bend. Fedarko paints with a detailed brush, even regaling his readers about the type of rocks he's putting his foot down on. One might think this could sound boring or overly literary; it is neither. Making backpacking, of all activities, an enjoyable and entertaining read hinges on being able to tell a story from one step to the next, and Fedarko excels at this; from setting his sleeping pad down in an ant-hill, to catching the sunset, to questing for water, the walk is not a dull one. 

As Fedarko notes, the history of the native peoples and their current battles with private developers has real outcomes for the future of the canyon, and is therefore worth knowing and exploring. However, these sections really faltered for me. Fedarko can write, but as he attempted to delve into the history and political quandaries, the writing became stagnant, formulaic even. To be clear, I don't have any issue with taking an overt stance on how the concept of private property and capitalism has driven this impossible conundrum where Native populations are forced to lease their land to developers and tourism companies as the only way to provide income to their devastated peoples. In fact, I welcome an overt point, but Fedarko meanders around it in a sort of both-sides dance that I found to be a shockingly hollow foil to the way he wrote the rest of the journey.

These sections were eye-rollingly tortured at times, but all is forgiven once Fedarko returns to the trail. His grapple with his father's illness, his place in the world - sometimes literally his position on it- and the pain inflicted by his physical traverse through the canyon is gripping. He dedicates his book to his late father, who, like my father, got him into the outdoors and taught him an appreciation of the world just outside his door.  The last few pages beautifully drive home the lesson that any landscape, be it suburban parks or vast mountain ranges, is worth knowing and subsequently loving. I'm grateful for A Walk in the Park; having never gotten out to see the Grand Canyon, reading it only deepened the appreciation I felt second-hand from my dad.