The Mindful Hiker: On the Trail to Find the Path has been awarded the 2005 Book of the Year and the 2005 Best Biography/Self Help book by the Coalition of Visionary Resources (covr.org)!
MindfulHiker.com has been chosen as a Top Spiritual Site for 2005 by Spirit and Sky!
 Spirit And Sky
Top Spiritual Site
2005
This book is about the opposite of bagging peaks--it's about spending
enough time in one place that you make some progress up the daunting
trail of your own psyche. A fascinating and helpful read, especially
for those of us more inclined to meditate on the move than cross-legged
in the ashram.
Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature and Wandering Home, among others
In the carefully crafted The Mindful Hiker, writer Stephen Altschuler connects with and reflects upon Point Reyes National Seashore, north of San Francisco. From his Zen perspective, an interesting mix of information, insight, and entertainment unfolds in his writing. Altschuler shares his experiences walking Sky Trail. As night turns to day and seasons pass, readers follow Altschuler’s physical and spiritual explorations and learn why he is drawn so persistently to nature. Altschuler traverses Sky Trail through ecstatic highs and devastating lows, returning again and again for comfort, stability, and a sense of connectedness. He fears the silence, yet he deliberately seeks it out. He describes his grieving as he watches a beloved pine tree die a slow death following a terrible wildfire. He journeys back to his own roots, attempting to heal losses of his childhood. He writes, "Grace means letting life emerge as it will and being present for the show." The beautiful design of the book reflects its transcendent purpose. This book captures the kind of psycho-spiritual journey through the natural world most of us long to make.
Anna Jedrziewski
Spirit Connection New York, N.Y.
Reviewed in New Age Retailer Magazine
Take a writer, teacher and mental health counselor who finds peace, understanding and direction in the act of walking in nature, and you have author Stephen Altschuler’s recent release, The Mindful Hiker: On the Trail to Find the Path.
On his first hike up Sky Trail in 1982, Altschuler walked with a friend through the remote reaches of California’s Point Reyes National Seashore. Conversation superseded impressions of the landscape, but subconsciously "...in the intervals between words and thoughts and laughter, the qualities of the place entered my soul, and my relationship with Sky Trail took root."
For the next twenty years, the journeys along Sky Trail fed his spirit, provided solace, challenged his physicality and listened without rancor to his monologues on the vagaries of life. Readers are drawn into the thoughtfulness of a hiker and are given time to reflect on their personal journeys through the teacher’s self-actualization activities at the end of each chapter.
Written, at times, with an almost poetic passion, The Mindful Hiker is indeed a Zen guide to hiking. "The trail was a messenger, a map that would lead me to internal places of mystery and discovery, places of origin I had lost touch with in the workaday world of achievement, ambition, and routine. Meeting a trail that seemed to offer such treasures and allowed me a loving, nonjudgmental setting for self-exploration led me to spend a lot of time with it."
Altschuler wanders through life along the trail, learning to understand his past, accept his present and look forward to the future. The lessons taught by reflection on the seasons, the trees, the plump huckleberries and the deer build to an inseparable need to speak out for conversation of our wild and special places. The book doesn’t preach values or beliefs or eschew the realities of modern life, but it does provide time to reflect on each.
The Mindful Hiker is at once insightful, entertaining, provoking and challenging. It is not unlike a hike along your favorite trail. Not everyone is going to enjoy the dogma associated with this book, but if you love to hike and the time it gives your to work through problems and clear your mind, you will want to give it a read. You might be surprised at what you can learn about yourself.
© 2004 by Megan Kopp for Curled Up With a Good Book at:
http://www.curledup.com
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"I love this book. I devoured each sentence like a sip of rare wine. 'The Mindful Hiker' is a remarkable journey into the inner realms of nature as well as an invitation into the enchanting province of the soul.”
—Denise Linn author of Sacred Space.
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"The Mindful Hiker offers a treasure of vistas, both on the inner plane of reflection and on the outer realm of nature. It should be savored slowly page by page."
—Carol Adrienne, PhD.,
author of When Life Changes, Or You Wish it Would.
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“The Mindful Hiker feels like a letter to a new friend. Stephen Altschuler articulates what hikers have all thought – or perhaps felt – during the quiet moments on the trail and suggests new ways to grow and connect with the hiking experience.”
—Mary Margaret Sloan, President
American Hiking Society
1422 Fenwick Lane
Silver Spring MD 20910
"The Mindful Hiker is an eloquent and important book for all concerned with coming into a deeper relationship with nature. Reading it will certainly open the door to self-discovery, heightened awareness of the environment ,and enlightened action."
—Peter Barnes, Director of Tomales Bay Institute, Author of Who Owns the Sky? Our Common Assets and the Future of Capitalism
Tomales Bay Institute
PO Box 237
Point Reyes Station CA 94956
“A fierce and aching spirit blows through this book – aching for freedom and joy, and from a heart bursting with love for the beauty and mystery of the natural world. Stephen Altschuler invites us to exault, rant, whine and fall in love with the great silence together with him. His words not only evoke the spirit of wild and free places but also provide inklings for us of ways to enter into and embody that same wisdom and freedom in our own hearts. This book is truly written as a gift from the heart – indeed, perhaps a more appropriate title it would have been the ‘The Heartful Hiker’ – may every reader enjoy the journey through these pages and end up at home safely, wiser and more peaceful from the experience.”
—Ajahn Amaro, Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery
16201 Tomki Road
Redwood Valley, CA 95470
“This book reminds us of how Nature provides such a mirror of the beauty, majesty, and largesse found within the human spirit. Every path or trail provides the learning and opportunity that awaits us for increased solace, peace, and balance.”
—Angeles Arrien, Ph.D., Cultural Anthropologist
Author of The Four-Fold Way and Sign of Life
"Sometimes the most simple acts can be the most powerful. Author Stephen Altschuler elevates the act of hiking — walking for pleasure while communing with nature — to dizzying heights in this part how-to, part environmental manifesto, and part love letter to northern California's Point Reyes National Seashore. Altschuler considers this area where he does most of his hiking his friend — the place where he spends time with God. Hiking its trails and vistas offers a feeling similar to other pastimes people become passionate about — like yoga or fly fishing — that allow them to become suspended in time.
Altschuler used his time hiking at Point Reyes to make sense of our tumultuous times and help him through divorce and midlife crisis. He points out the similarities between a hiking trail and a spiritual path, giving examples of Moses and Martin Luther King "going to the mountaintop" during their most important quests. The mountain trail mimics life, with its trailhead, forks, rises and dips, and eventually -- a summit. Altschuler urges us to use our senses of observation, to see, smell, and feel nature, "by slowing down and seeing what is before us." He not only describes this lovely approach to life, but encourages us to participate, by adding questions and suggestions at the end of each chapter, inspiring readers to think, recall, journal and learn about ourselves and our world.
This is a modern day Walden that belongs in every hiker's backpack."
Review of The Mindful Hiker, July 22, 2004
—James Barnes, Editor, IndependentPublisher.com
The Mindful Hiker: On the Trail to Find the Path (DeVorss & Co. May, 2004). Available at booksellers or online.
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