Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart by Carrot Quinn

Unlike most other adventure books this story concentrates only on what the author was thinking while walking during this long hike. What would have made Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart better? Walk,sleep,tired,happy,hungry,pain - then repeat I’d rather re-listen to Wild for the 10th time than hear the minutiae of another day of “I’m starving.I ate too much.I’m lonely.I hate people” angsty day on the PCT. Bottom line: I called in evac and bailed with about 1/3 of the book left. It’s like reading every cliche about millennials and their inability to disconnect, FOMO and general angst, but applied to a 2600 mile hike to Canada. She manages to get into a cutesy lesbian thing with another hiker but trades snowflake-experiencing-Tinder level sexting when they’re apart on the trail and the other woman is flirting with a different hiker.and telling her about it. When she’s with people, she loves them until she can’t stand them.then misses them on the trail (all within about 24 hours from meeting them). I’ve never read a book about hiking that made me less interested in experiencing a similar trek or “nope”ing so hard at the idea of traveling with the author.

She didn’t have long pants and only wore shorts.but talks about being in extreme cold.says she read all the right books but seems to be surprised by each mishap.”what is Hiker heaven.I didn’t even know” is the kind of pretentious wide eyed innocence that shows up throughout and rings.if not false.at least disingenuous. Tough to buy that she’s going to hike long distance in that conditions. The author talked a lot about eating ice cream and hamburgers.then in a later chapter reveals that she’s lactose intolerant and has issues with gluten so if she ate like that she’d be dooming herself to days of diarrhea. And every time I checked the remaining time, the end was nowhere near. There was no story, just a series of narration about what Carrot ate, how well or badly she slept, and how she felt about whatever sexual entanglement was occupying her mind. They call the descent from the saddle “The 99 switchbacks” because it’s a seemingly endless back and forth and back and forth, while the valley below seems impossibly out of reach-never getting closer no matter how long I walked.

Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart by Carrot Quinn