Dude, Where’s My Walking Stick? Assumed published, copyright and written by Kevin Moore.
This is a tale by the author of a journey he undertook that covered the entire, extremely difficult walking trail “Te Waipounamu South Island, New Zealand”. The trip began on December 12 on the Te Araroa, or The Long Pathway: New Zealand’s national long distance trail and 70 days later completed “more than 3,000 kilometers, through countless trails that traversed colossal mountain ranges, forded too many rivers to count, crossed innumerable valleys, and cut through scores of breathtaking forests from the top of North Island to the bottom of the South.” The book chronicles the daily details of the journey,
Discussion: the author, although not physically prepared for a walking trip of this severity, attempted and finished the extensive journey fraught with challenges of great proportions for persons with much superior physical conditioning. Much was accomplished in his case almost completely through almost complete reliance upon mental tenacity of purpose. As such, the story sets forth an aspect of this individual that, more generally speaking, would not be expected from a mental picture one gains from self-descriptions and actions provided by the man. Description of the terrain, sky, birds and beasts is extensive and provides fascinating images for anyone having encountered anything similar and enough to generate an interest in any person not having seen anything similar. Admittedly, verbal presentations do offer a certain amount of redundancy/repetition that would have been relieved with inclusion of pictures. Overall, this is a book that devotees of travel will find to be riveting. Probably lesser interest to other readers for reasons they will recognize.
4* 5* for travel enthusiasts; -1* for others as described.