In the book Mycoskie, Chief Shoe Giver, offers many useful tips and lessons for doing well with a new and struggling business like show up in person (don’t always just send emails), have a story to tell, and do things to get noticed. I think the best tip from these is to tell a story, and he offers some story telling advice including the story must be authentic, because if it’s not customers and employees will know.

This is a motivational book that will provide instruction for young and new entrepreneurs. It’s different from most business and motivational books and will appeal to anyone looking for a different angle from this genre. I enjoyed this book and recommend it to those that are fans of Toms Shoes, those that like to read success stories, and those who wants to be inspired.

Fun Fact: The name TOMS comes from Tomorrows Shoes

Free Book: I was provided an extra copy to give away in a contest. I’ll keep the contest simple. If you want the free copy blog, tweet, or place a link on Facebook back to this post. In the post mention your idea to start a social responsible business, what you want to do with an existing business, or simply why you want this book. I’ll select my favorite answer and send you the book (U.S. only). Make sure to contact me with a link back to your post or tweet.

This contest will end December 23, 2011 at midnight EST.

It all began innocently enough. We heard about new trails crisscrossing the Alps. The Via Alpina consists of five trails stretching from Trieste, Italy on the Adriatic to Monte Carlo. By combining ancient long distance routes, they trace the backbone of the Alps for more than 5,000 kilometers.

As seasoned thru-hikers looking for a challenge, we were hooked. Why not? This trail would combine Alpine beauty, culture, nature, history and cuisine with some of the world’s most demanding trails and mountains.

Where to start? That’s the beauty of this design. It’s walking jazz. Constant improvisation. You set off in whatever region you like—Italy, Slovenia, Austria, Germany, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, France or Monaco—for as long as you dare.

Actually, I imagined it as a European Appalachian Trail—but with better food and wine. Faster than you can say “schnitzel,” I coaxed my wife Cheryl into escaping with me. We wanted to be among the first to thru-hike its eight-country length to the Mediterranean before the first snow hit.

After rigorous training for five months and outfitting with light gear from GoLite and Gossamer, we left our so-called normal lives for Trieste, Italy in June 2009. There was no turning back.

Unlike our historic hike across Tibet, we wouldn’t dodge Chinese soldiers. But there was every other challenge. To start, even though we had thirty topo maps from Omni Resources, finding trail markers was a daily headache across Slovenia. Often they were half-buried or mown down by snowfall.

Then there’s Alpine weather, as unpredictable as politics. At 6-9,000 feet, it can be sunny, showery, snowing and foggy—all on the same day. Forty days of pelting rain were followed by relentless Föhn winds.

Even for hikers carrying just fifteen-pound packs, the terrain is demanding. We tried to cover at least 20 kilometers a day, a virtual marathon, knowing another mountain awaited tomorrow. The autumn snows wouldn’t wait…

At first, the trails were slow going. Ice fields (11 on one particular June day) blocked our path across narrow scree. And let me remind you, it’s a long way to the bottom. During our first week, Cheryl dangled over a chasm, anchored to an ice flow by only her Nordic pole. A badly swollen knee threatened to end her trekking then and there. Yet we continued.

For the record, over the next 31/2 months, I guesstimate we climbed and slid down 700,000 feet —12 Mt. Everests measured from sea level. Then again, who knew lethal ticks and cow patties could ultimately prove more dangerous?

But hey, it was far from peril. We shared company with legendary giants like Mt. Blanc and the Eiger. Wildflowers abounded. Sighting steinbok, chamois and marmots made our day. We enjoyed hearing local legends, such as the tale of Mt. Jolly and the shepherd whose tears froze to form Mt. Blanc glacier.

As usual, there were the eccentrics, such as the hiker who stripped down to his skivvies at dinner to show just how lightly he packed. Or the dairyman who helped us escape a hailstorm to sleep in his barn above 80-bell clanging cows, a non-stop serenade.

But more often, we stayed in comfortable mountain huts run by mountaineering clubs or pensions with local families. Our daily budget averaged about $40/day per person, but you could easily spend more.

And food? No peanut butter on this trek. One fond memory is dinner eaten in a shepherd’s cabin by firelight. First, the grizzled fellow fixed socca, fried chickpea meal crepe. Then came wild nettle and potato soup, roast lamb with herbed onions, and four kinds of handmade cheese. As always, there was schnapps, hefeweisen beers and great wines at the end of tough days.

Hiking the Via Alpina is a demanding, yet tasty feast. Although you can, you don’t have to devour the entire 1200 miles in one bite. Choose one region for several weeks, matching the route to your interests and physical condition. Like I said, it’s like jazz. And you’ll be among the first to play this tune.

Each night I chronicled our adventure while muscles ached and clothes dried. Join us. My new book, Over the Top & Back Again: Hiking X the Alps, sweeps you along for a gritty, sometimes funny, slightly crazed, totally uncensored look at the Alps—and at a couple who dare to follow their gonzo dream.

For precise Via Alpina trail info: www.via-alpina.org

© Brandon Wilson, 2011
one time non-exclusive use granted for website

Yosemite National Park Ranger Shelton Johnson’s first novel Gloryland is the first person story of Elijah Yancy, an African American raised in post Civil War South Carolina that hikes out of the South to Nebraska, becomes a Buffalo Soldier, and eventually finds himself guarding the new Yosemite National Park in the early 20^th Century.

Johnson is such a wonderful storyteller that Gloryland reads less like a novel and more like an old man telling you his life story. The book is so beautifully written that I found line after line that I wanted to quote, but to keep this review concise I’ll only share a couple of my favorite quotes like the words Yancy offers after seeing a beautiful woman:

“She woke me up from a sleep so deep I didn’t even know I’d been dreaming all my life…You don’t need eyes to see beauty once you got it inside your head. You don’t need hands to feel beauty, once it seeps into your bones.”

Ranger Johnson’s time in Yosemite hasn’t been wasted and comes through in his poetic words, and not since John Muir has a love letter to Yosemite so elegantly been written. Anyone that has ever seen the Sierra Nevada Mountains or visited Yosemite understands the beauty that is difficult to express in words, or even pictures, but somehow Johnson captures the splendor of the land in his novel. I have spent many weeks walking and visiting with Yosemite and feel connected in a spiritual way that only can be understood by others that have properly experienced this heaven on earth. Yancy understands this when he states, “God is everywhere, but I’m thinking he prefers some places more than others. I’m thinking he spends a lot of time in these mountains.”

This is not your typical novel.  It is much more.  It is a spiritual journey and a discovery that will mean different things to different people.  It is appropriate that Yosemite is a setting for this story because both Yosemite and Gloryland are powerful on a religious level and neither is easy to define.  When I read this book I felt like I was listening to the stories of an old man that had lived an exciting life and was passing on his lessons before passing.   You may take something entirely different from this novel, and that’s okay, because like religion and nature there are different things of value for each of us.

This is a novel I want my children to read someday. To teach them about their country and the struggles of strong people that made America the great place it is today. This piece of historical fiction is simultaneously educational and entertaining as history flows naturally from the narrator’s lips. Ranger Shelton Johnson is not only a great American patriot, but also a great writer with a unique voice. This book will make a cherished gift during the holidays and is highly recommended.

The step-by-step approach to identifying trees is really cool and reminds of the Choose Your Own Adventure books I read as a kid. This tree book is as much fun now as those books were then, except that you never fall into an endless, black pit with the Arbor Day book. To identify a tree you follow various paths based on questions until you’ve narrowed the search down to your tree.

Other tree books I own use photographs as illustrations. While photographs have value they usually don’t show texture or other identifiable characteristics of a particular tree making identification difficult. What Tree is That? uses illustrations hand-drawn by artist Karina Helm. Helm has extensive experience creating natural history and scientific illustrations and her experience and talent shows in the beautiful and detailed images, images that make identification easy.

I read several books per month and own dozens of outdoor manuals, travel guides, and nature identification guides and I rate this book among the best. I highly recommend getting your own copy of What Tree Is That? as it will become a treasured part of your collection and a family heirloom as well.

The most interesting part of the book to me was not about the Chris McCandless, the subject of the book, but a deviation in the story where Jon writes about an extreme climbing trip in Alaska where he risked death climbing Devils Thumb.  I think that Jon should write a life biography because he has some great stories to tell. Maybe he’s just waiting until he’s older and has a few more adventures to write about?

Jon Krakauer is a great writer that tells a good story and leaves out the fluff.  Pick up anything he’s written and he’ll take you on an adventure you won’t soon forget.