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.

Let faster-moving parties pass – If hikers are about to overtake you, step aside at a safe spot and let them pass. If you find yourself to be the faster-moving party, don’t crowd and push aside the slower hikers but kindly ask them if you can pass.

Don’t come to a dead stop in front of other hikers – Hikers behind you will either have to come to a dead stop, too, or crash into you. Both can result in injury. At the very least, it’s an annoyance. If you need to stop, pull off to the side of the trail so others can pass.

Be casually friendly – Be friendly to other hikers by acknowledging them as passing and stopping to talk if they so desire. You may be able to share knowledge of the trail.

At the same time, don’t give out too much information about yourself to strangers. While most people on trails are safe, you don’t want to unnecessarily put yourself at risk, especially if you have children with you.

Don’t pet another hiker’s dog unless you have permission – Presuming dogs on a hiking trail are safe seems reasonable, but not all are child-friendly. Some friendly ones even may be startled by your child. Kids should stay away from a dog unless it is acting friendly and then not touch unless the other hiker stops and invites the child to pet it.

Walk single file on narrow trails – If you can’t walk two abreast on a trail without crashing through branches or going slightly off trail, then walk single file. Widening trails destroys the natural setting and can create problems for other hikers. For example, a small rock avalanche can occur on switchbacks. Hikers below you won’t appreciate that, and the rolling rocks also will erode the trail. In flat grassy areas, a multitude of trails created by hikers trying to walk side by side can create confusion for future hikers as a map only shows one trail through the meadow or prairie.

Know when to be quiet – Keep noise to a minimum and your conversations down when passing campgrounds or other hikers. Many come to the wilds for solitude and to escape the noise and bustle of city life. Respect them just as you would the customs of people in a foreign country when visiting their land. As hiker parent Caroline M., of Glens Falls, N.Y., advises: “Shouts and whistles only should be used during emergencies. Turn off your cell phone, too. You went on the hike to be with your kids and enjoy nature, not to chat on the phone.”

Never tamper with signs or other trial markers – Other hikers depend upon these markers so they don’t get lost. There are hikers who believe such man-made intrusions scar the landscape, and so they always knock over cairns, or man-made rock piles, when coming across them. I can understand this temptation in remote backcountry, but such behavior on day hiking trails that kids traverse endangers lives.

Always close gates behind you – Some trails cross privately owned land, and through the good graces of that landowner, hikers are allowed to cross it to avoid an extensive detour. If you cross through a gate onto private property, be sure to close it. The gate probably is there to keep pastured animals from wandering onto public lands.

Do not force your way through fences – Besides running the risk of scratching and cutting your-self, it’ll only enlarge the hole, rendering the fence useless. The fence is there for a purpose.

Avid hiker Rob Bignell is author of “Hikes with Tykes: A Practical Guide to Day Hiking with Kids,” available at Amazon.

Many parents have no idea where there even is a trail. They wonder how to keep their kids properly dressed for the wilds and how they’ll ever carry their infant all those miles. They struggle to figure out how much water and food to bring. They ponder what to do when their children get bored on the trail or start to misbehave. They know there must be a better way to cross rough terrain than the balancing act they’re attempting. They want to understand how to treat injuries from blisters to broken bones, of what to do if they’re lost or even forced to stay the night in the woods.

A new guidebook – Rob Bignell’s “Hikes with Tykes: A Practical Guide to Day Hiking with Kids” – offers the answers to these and many other questions.

In this comprehensive survey of an increasingly popular family activity, Bignell offers readers a no-nonsense, informative guide to taking children on day hikes. An Outdoor Industry Association report from 2010 says that 40 million Americans hike. Many of those hikers bring their children with them.

During these difficult economic times, many Americans have turned back to this low-cost, fun activity – and are sticking with it.

“Hiking is beneficial in so many ways, from providing exercise to enjoying the natural beauty of the outdoors,” Bignell said. “It’s not surprising that there are so many hikers, or that children love to go on walks.”

Most people can find the gear they need for a day hike simply by gathering together a few odds and ends from around their home. And with more than 200,000 miles of trails in the United States – at county, state and national parks as well as other nature areas – no one need travel far to enjoy the great outdoors.

Loaded with personal anecdotes and tips, “Hikes with Tykes” provides a step-by-step guide to everything an adult needs to know about hiking with children, including how to:

 Find kid-appropriate trails

 Keep kids properly dressed for the wilds

 Figure out how much water and food to bring

 Cross rough terrain

 Prevent children from getting bored on the trail

 Treat injuries from blisters to broken bones

 Handle getting lost or being forced to stay the night in the woods

A long-time hiker, editor and journalist, Bignell is uniquely qualified to discuss hiking with children. He and his son Kieran go on day hikes about twice a week. Bignell took Kieran on his first hike when he was but four-months-old, through an old grove of redwood trees that soared 150 feet over their heads. Since then, they’ve peakbagged mountains, rambled along ocean coastlines, searched fossil and gem trails, and explored desert canyons, often all in the same month.

Before Kieran, Bignell served as an infantryman in the Army National Guard and taught middle school students in New Mexico and Wisconsin. His newspaper work has won several journalism awards, from editorial writing to sports reporting. In 2001, The Prescott Journal, which he served as managing editor of, was named Wisconsin’s Weekly Newspaper of the Year.

Bignell now lives with his son in Southern California.

“Hikes with Tykes” is available for purchase online at http://hikeswithtykes.com/home.html.

Book specs:

 Publish date: July 19, 2011

 Publisher: Atiswinic Press

 ISBN: 978-0-615-51220-4

 Price: $13.99

 Pages: 232

 Cover: Paperback

 Trim Size: 5.5 x 8.5

 Website: http://hikeswithtykes.com/home.html

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

You’ve got your boots, your sleeping mat and your water bottle. You throw in your plate, your mug and your camera. And what with that trowel, headlamp and first aid kit – well, there isn’t a lot of room for anything much extra.

But if there’s one thing I wouldn’t be without on a trip – any trip – it’s a book to read. Idon’t care if I’ve got a five minute bus journey, or a plane trip to the other side of the world and they’ll only let me have a shoebox for hand luggage, the FIRST thing on my list is a novel. And heading out into the great outdoors just makes me salivate at the thought of sitting up against a great and ancient tree trunk, or curling up by the fire and pulling a battered paperback out of my backpack.

Of course, getting yourself outside is all about appreciating the environment you are in. But just because you are immersing yourself in a book during a break in your journey doesn’t mean you are losing touch with the fantastic scenery that surrounds you. In fact, if it is the right novel, it may actually accentuate the experience.

Take a book like Nicholas Drayson’s A Guide to the Birds of East Africa. It doesn’t sound like much from the title, but it is actually a delightful story about a mild-mannered Kenyan widower who is secretly sweet on the woman who leads the local bird walking club. When someone else starts competing for her affections, he and his nemesis embark on a competition to see who can spot the most bird species in one week. What follows is a series of disasters, laughter and much skullduggery – and I challenge you to read a novel like this and not start noticing the birds around you with great intensity for at least a week afterwards!

And what about if you decided to take a copy of Peter Carey’s novel True History of the Kelly Gang on your next hike in the wilderness? You’d be hard-pressed not to compare your own landscape to that of the harsh Australian bush while reading it.

But maybe fiction just doesn’t work for you on an outdoor trip, and you’d prefer to be inspired, amused or entertained by other people’s hiking experiences. Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods
is an obvious choice, or perhaps something a bit more exotic, like Rory Stewart’s ‘The Places in Between’ in which he walks across Afghanistan.

My greatest joy is to read books that are set in the place I am going – whether it is fiction, memoirs or travel stories. And I can’t think of any better place to do this than on a hike in which you can really take the time to appreciate the landscape of the place you are in.

But as an Australian who lives in Europe – I need your help! My trips to the U.S. have been limited to a few days in New York and a weekend in San Francisco, and my only perspective of the American wilderness comes from old episodes of Little House on the Prairie. So I figure if I want to know more about the U.S, you guys are the people to ask. What are the books that you think best tell the stories of the places you love to explore with hiking boots and a compass?

At Packabook we categorise books into the places they are set. We will soon be tackling the millions of books written about or set in the United States, and trying to find the ones that really give us a window on each state. We are looking for those books that make you feel you have been there, or at least want to go! From Minnesota to Texas, I would love to hear your thoughts on the novels and travel stories of the places you love the most.

Who better to do that than those who are prepared to tackle rivers, mountains and hiking trails with only the bags they can carry, all in a bid to explore the country they love. You guys are the experts and I look forward to exploring your country through books, at least until I get the chance to go there myself.

Why not make some suggestions in the comments below. We’d love to hear them.

Suzi at Packabook

Packabook is a place to find travel novels and travelogues set in particular countries.

Feel free to subscribe to the blog to read our latest reviews and start exploring the rich and exciting world we live in through books.

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.