On 1/8/2017 John Kohnen wrote:
The author, a middle-aged curmudgeon who once hiked wild places and climbed high mountains, developed a "quirky appetite for low adventure," and from 1976 to 1978 walked sections of the shore between Seattle and Bellingham, eventually covering most of the distance, and some of Whidbey and Camano Islands to boot. Along the way, this narrative takes side trips into autobiography, history and the author's prejudices and preferences. Having some curmudgeonly tendencies myself, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
"A warning to the reader of this book: It is not a hiker's guide.... No attempt should be made to use the present book... as a route guide. The risks are too great of being arrested and thrown in a rural jail, shot in the britches by an enraged duck-buster, irreversibly damaged while straddling a barbed-wire fence, or drowned in a soup of fertilizers, pesticides and cow shit.
"A further frustration to those trying to use this book as a guide is that while the story is told largely from south to north, sometimes it travels north to south, occasionally west or east, and some of the narratives combine walks taken over a number of years.
"If this isn't a guidebook, what is it? A book of sermons, perhaps.
"I preach that air travel be scaled back, as a start, to the level of twenty years ago, further reductions to be considered after all the Boeing engineers have been retrained as turkey ranchers. The state Game Department should establish a season on helicopters -- fifty-two weeks a year, twenty-four hours a day, no bag limit..."
Hardcover. 265 pages.