Unique among Appalachian Trail books, Breakfast with Salamanders records an eleven-year adventure hiking the entire Trail by sections, in trips ranging from overnights to weeks at a time. Organized by seasons, it looks back to the great tradition in American nature writing running from Thoreau’s Walden through Leopold’s Sand County Almanac and Abbey’s Desert Solitaire. Deeply (and quietly) informed by a Zen Buddhist sensibility and, in later chapters, interspersed with original poems in haiku form, it also evokes Basho’s Narrow Road to the Deep North. A book to read in quiet hours or, tucked into a backpack, on the trail.
This is a book for the experienced AT hiker-and for the casual saunterer in the woods. It’s a book for hikers who like to know the names of things, flora, and fauna-and for walkers who take a simple pleasure in putting one foot in front of the other. The author knows birds and their calls, flowers and their habitat, and the qualities of different kinds of rain-and he also knows that the appeal of the trail is self-evident and needs no justification. Yet this book is more than a travelogue, more than an account of the section hikes that over a period of years made up a completion of the Appalachian Trail. There is a project here and a personal story-the making of the hiker, the identity of the hiker in his web of personal relationships and in relation to mountains and waters-and there is the implication that the unmediated encounter with the natural world that the trail affords is transformative. For those contemplating their next hike-and for those whose hiking days are fewer and far between-this book is the next best thing to the Trail itself.
-Pierce Butler, author ofA Child of the Sun
In this lovely reverie, long-time Zen practitioner Alan Richardson shares his walking practice with us - a practice that takes place over eleven years and covers more than two thousand miles. Alan’s years of Zen training shine through - not through philosophizing, but through the action of walking and reporting out on the world he begins to walk through. Closely observing both the inner and the outer world, he takes us along to share the joys and challenges of his adventures on and around the Appalachian Trail. Through his writing, Alan invites each of us to appreciate more fully the ordinary miracle of being human.
-David Rynick, Roshi, abbot of Boundless Way Temple and author of This Truth Never Fails
Alan Richardson grew up in Washington State, backpacking and mountain climbing in the North Cascade and Olympic ranges from a young age. He has taught English and American literature at Boston College for over thirty years and serves as a Senior Assistant Teacher in the Boundless Way Zen community. Based in Eastern Massachusetts, he has never stopped hiking the Appalachian Trail.
