A walk in the park The true story of a spectacular misadventure in the Grand Canyon

In his first book (2013's The Emerald Mile), journalist Fedarko chronicled the fastest recorded boat ride through the Grand Canyon. Here, in his second book, he moves the action from boats to boots, centering Fedarko's own lifelong relationship with the canyon, from reading about it as a child through his time as a clumsy canoe guide. The thrust of the narrative follows the proposed canyon-spanning hike of Fedarko and photographer Pete McBride, his partner in many previous, mostly failed journalistic endeavors, along with a supporting cast of more seasoned canyon hikers. Readers will appreciate the buddy-comedy element throughout as Fedarko shares his and McBride's steps, missteps, and arguments along the way, all supplemented nicely by McBride's photographs. A Walk in the Park, though, particularly inspires when Fedarko shifts away from the tourist aspect of the canyon, detailing the ancestral history of the land and some of the Indigenous voices who continue to fight against overdevelopment today amid ever-booming visitor numbers.

An immersive account of the challenges of a grueling 750-mile hike through the Grand Canyon. In the autumn of 2015, Fedarko, author of The Emerald Mile, and his frequent associate, photojournalist Pete McBride, headed out, with very little preparation, on the first leg of their journey on foot through the canyon--"a thing that fewer than two dozen people had ever done." Fedarko, who had served as an unpaid apprentice on boat trips through the canyon for several seasons, knew the place from that point of view, but experiencing the dry and dangerous landscape and traveling without marked trails, on foot, was a different matter entirely, and the adventurous duo began the trip with "a conflation of willful ignorance, shoddy discipline, and outrageous hubris"--as well as about twice as much weight as they should have been carrying in their backpacks. Luckily, a series of expert local hikers volunteered to accompany them on several of the legs of their expedition, but even so, they went through more than a few near-death experiences from illness, dehydration, infection, slides on ice, falling rocks, lack of food, and other calamities. Fedarko expansively describes the journey--"a misguided odyssey through the heart of perhaps the harshest and least forgiving, but also the most breathtakingly gorgeous, landscape feature on earth"--with a combination of dry humor and horror, and he pays tribute to the spare beauty, grandeur, and silence of a place that few have seen, resulting in a memorable reading experience. Integrated into the memoir are maps, photos, accounts of earlier and contemporary hikers, explorations of the geology and biology of the region, interviews with Native Americans whose lands are adjacent to the canyon, and examinations of the many pressures from tourism and economic development faced by the park. Vivid armchair travel through a haunting and forbidding landscape. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.