Skywalker: Highs and Lows on the Pacific Crest Trail [Kindle Edition]

As a 2009 alum of the PCT, I was excited to hear that Skywalker had written about his experience on the trail. I first bumped into Skywalker at the hostel in Big Bear City when he was trying to figure out what to do with his feet. When I arrived, nearly every person I met during my brief stay greeted me by asking, "Have you met Skywalker? The tall Georgia boy?" I ended up seeing Skywalker on several occasions throughout California and Southern Oregon. I never did see him in Washington. For obvious reasons, Skywalker was one of the most identifiable people on the trail, and it was always a pleasure to bump into him along the way and swap war stories from the previous section of trail. I vividly remember part of the conversation that he had with No Pain as NP was headed south and the rest of us were headed north because I caught up to Skywalker as they were having it. For me, it was at least as depressing a prognosis as Skywalker recounts in the book.

I mention the No Pain conversation because Skywalker has a great talent for capturing the human side of the trail. The PCT is so much more than 2600+ miles from Mexico to Canada. It has a lot of protagonists and antagonists, depending on your perspective. It's not just about getting up and over Forester Pass or taking the side trip to the top of Mt. Whitney. It's also about the decision-making process. Do I have the time? Do I have the resources? Will this add to the trip or contribute to the difficulty of making it to Canada before winter? Those are the conflicts that jumped out at me as I read Skywalker's book.

I recently took a cross-country flight and read the entire book from start to finish in the air because I just couldn't put it down. Nearly every page took me back to the trail where I remembered quite vividly the internal struggle that was going on as I looked ahead to the next set of switchbacks or waterless stretch of trail. Those conflicts are what I sensed again as I read The Highs and Lows of the PCT. I trust, however, that even those who have never set foot upon the Pacific Crest Trail will get an accurate taste of what life on the trail is like, the risks and challenges inherent to it, and some of the people you meet along the way.

I read Bill Walkers 1st book, (Skywalker - Close Encounters on the Appalachian Trail). Bill Walker was a relatable character and it didn't take long to finish the book. That said, the writing was poor and the book didn't always have a great flow to it.

Despite this, it was a very personal account of life on the trail and I felt connected enough to the writer to want to read about his next adventure; "Skywalker: Highs and Lows of the Pacific Crest Trail."

Bill Walker did an absolutely tremendous job on this book. For one, the writing is much better! I had read complaints about errors in earlier releases. This latest release I downloaded to my kindle seemed to be cleaned up. Some occasional errors still exist, but as a hole, the writing was VERY improved.

The book goes back and forth between Skywalker's experience on the trail and the history / personal observations about the different regions he hiked through. In his first book (Skywalker - Close Encounters on the Appalachian Trail), Walker's efforts to intertwine historical facts and observations with his day to day hiking felt forced. It just didn't seem to flow. In this book however, Walker was masterful.

Skywalker is very open and honest about himself and his own thoughts and feelings. He writes with no Ego, and gives a fair assessment of his own abilities and shortcomings. He does a wonderful job contrasting the many hardships of life on the trail (From his foot issues in the desert to freezing in Washington State) w/ the great beauty and personal accomplishments that accompany such a journey.

I found the book to be entertaining, educational, and interesting. The historical commentary appears to be well researched and the book itself flowed along nicely. Overall, it was very well done!

Bill Walker is a likeable enough guy, and he's done things most of us haven't and never will. Kudos to him. We really want to hike this trail with him vicariously, but he makes it so hard.

I first read his AT story, and as it progressed, I thought I detected the telltale signs of self-publishing -- chaotic commas and hyphens, stories, instead of their audience, described as "incredulous," etc. No great stigma attached; it's just a fact that most people do not write in perfect prose. Publishers know this, and they hire editors and proofreaders to run interference so neither they nor the author will be embarrassed by the finished product.

So I was more than a little surprised to read at the end of the AT book that Bill actually had a publisher; now that's embarrassing. Did the publisher have either an editor or a proofreader?

But I enjoyed the story enough to continue on to the PCT. Wow. This book is a genuine festival of editorial error, and not just of the low-grade, misplaced comma variety. There are rampant, random italics, there are typos, there are missing words, and so many hyphens are missing it's almost like reading a foreign language at times. It took me nearly a minute to tease out what "heightrelated" meant -- kind of like seeing the bird in the Escher painting. Then there are the endless misused words and phrases: "wit" for "whit," "shear" for "sheer," "delicatessens" for "delicacies," "flee" for "flea," "tortuous" for "torturous," a hiker who "bought (rather than bit) the dust," and my personal favorite, a windstorm that was so bad the author had to "take umbrage" in his tent. Maybe he was deeply offended, and maybe he did appreciate the shade, but I'm guessing his intended meaning was "take shelter."

The book also needed substantive editing to give it a stronger story line and less of its current confusing and uninteresting randomness. The reader comes away with very vague impressions of this journey, and even more vague impressions of the other hikers who pop in and pop out. Much more vague than the AT book. There's a story here, but no one drew it out of the author.

This kind of thing casts an amateurish pall over the whole enterprise and truly undercuts the author's credibility in the telling of the tale. It's too bad; with some editing maybe this adventure and its likeable author could find a wider audience.