Book review: Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart by Carrot Quinn

If only I could write as well as Carrot Quinn. And have her endurance too.

I heard about Carrot Quinn a couple of months ago; I can't remember from where. She walked the PCT in 2013 without much backpacking experience beforehand, built on this with another thru-hike of the PCT the following year, and in May this year will start her walk along the CDT. She has become a bit of an inspiration to me so I was excited to find that she was writing a book of her first PCT hike. Her blog, which she also publishes while on the trail, is often sublime, and she has a way of connecting with her readers in a very personal way such that she speaks to me directly – no one else reads her blog, right? I hoped that the book would be an extension of the same.

After Cheryl Strayed's Wild, cynics could have a field day with another woman writing a book about the PCT. I personally enjoyed Wild, but didn't really view it as a book about the PCT as much as a woman's journey through the pain of her past; the walk a mechanism to unravel herself and to literally move on. Carrot's book isn't comparable for me. The writing is direct and elevated from the mundane. Carrot is a generous writer and as the book develops her emotions are bared candidly, which sometimes for the reader are quite painfully raw (this is a good thing!). But it's not just a book about emotions; here is much about the trail itself, beautifully written descriptions of the areas she walks through and the people that she meets or walks with. She writes so well that there is very much a feeling of walking with her, without the thirst, hunger, illness – or the views, sadly! For anyone who has found out much about (or even walked) the PCT, they will be aware that this isn't exactly a walk in the park. From desert/chaparral travel to walking at altitude to meeting something more like Scottish/Norwegian conditions, she describes it all and very vividly. Damn I felt cold in Washington!

Read this – it's bloody good!

This is a self published book, but where many hikers hopefully release their works to Amazon and the like, this book actually hangs together coherently and is edited so that it flows and that there is a similar depth throughout. (Carrot crowd funded the book and paid for editing which I think is well worth doing, even for a self published author.) There isn't any of the tired-author impression where the latter part of a book diminishes in detail and energy. It's just as good towards the end, apart from it actually ending! Joyfully for me there are very few errors so I wasn't jolted out of my imaginary world just because of a mistake, all of which makes the book a good read and one that I didn't want to end.

If you haven't read a book about the PCT before then I'd recommend this as a hard-to-beat start. If you have then I'd recommend this as one that is better than pretty much all those I've read to date. The only trouble then is that the rest become sort of disappointing...

This isn't the first book that Carrot has written, and I sincerely hope it won't be the last. A hard copy edition will be published in a few months but for now Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart is available on Amazon, and at the time of writing is free! Hurry because it won't last long!