How one man’s six-month, end-to-end hike of the Appalachian Trail led him back home

with a new afterword by the author

Leaving mortgage, wife, and cul-de-sac life behind to walk the Appalachian Trail, Robert Rubin found himself part of a strange culture of pilgrims and dropouts, a world with its own rules and rituals. With eloquence and humor, he recounts his 2,160-mile-long trek—the people he met, the landscapes he passed through, and the spiritual and physical endurance involved. On the Beaten Path is a wise, witty look at one of the few remaining pilgrimages in our disillusioned age.