The Best Books to Take On-Trail, By Terrain
Every ounce a backpacker carries is usually interrogated, justified, and weighed against its usefulness. For many, a book fails that test spectacularly. But does every ounce require a return on investment? Some items justify their weight because they compel you to slow down and feel like you’re moving with a place, not just through it. My sap-stained copy of The Overstory perfectly checks the box. Personally, you won’t catch me hauling a copy of Infinite Jest up a mountain, but adding a lean paperback to my load out barely registers against my base weight.
If you’re interested in adding a bit of literary flair to your backpacking kit, consider this your trail-side reading list, organized by terrain, instead of genre.
For a Trip in the Mountains
One Day On Beetle Rock by Sally Carrighar: A must-read for any nature nerd. This book follows nine different animals through a single day on one granite outcrop in Sequoia National Park (a spot you can visit yourself!). Each chapter passes the narration to a new creature, so the same hours replay again and again from a different vantage point.
Want something with a little more edge? Try A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean: Another outdoor classic. Loosely based on the author’s childhood, this novella centers on the life of two brothers and their minister father in early-20th-century Missoula, Montana.
For a Trip in the Desert
Cactus Country by Zoë Bossiere: A raw coming-of-age memoir of gender fluidity, class struggle, and belonging set in a dusty Tucson, Arizona trailer park. Bossiere’s world of prickly cacti, paunchy javelinas, and the gritty, sun-scorched landscape of the desert southwest mirrors the hard-edged masculinity of the working-class community the author struggles to navigate.
Craving something invented instead of true? Try Death Comes For The Archbishop by Willa Cather: Written in 1927, this novel follows a priest from Ohio to the newly-annexed New Mexico Territory where he establishes a Catholic diocese. As this holy man struggles to navigate the unforgiving desert, he spends more time with the native inhabitants and realizes his task is more complicated than anticipated.
For a Trip to the Shore
The Old Man And The Sea by Ernest Hemingway: A lean novel about an aging fisherman who hasn't caught a fish in 84 days. You won’t find a juicy plot here beyond man, boat, and fish, but you are in for one of the best parables about pride, aging with grace, and what it means to lose.
Looking for something more philosophical? Try The Island By Aldous Huxley: In Huxley's final novel, and the follow-up to the dystopian Brave New World, a journalist is shipwrecked on an island where a Buddhist-influenced society has created a realistic utopia.
For a Trip to the Deep Woods
Even As We Breathe by Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle: Set during World War II in the Appalachian Mountains of western North Carolina, this coming-of-age thriller follows a young Cherokee man who takes a job at a nearby resort and gets sucked into a missing-persons mystery.
Want something a bit more grounded? Try North Woods by Daniel Mason: A “fly-on-a-wall” story that follows the many inhabitants of a house in New England over the course of several centuries. While generations of very different people move through the home, the woods surrounding it endure in their own varied ways, unbothered—yet not untouched—by the human dramas unfolding nearby.
— Ash Czarnota
