2016 read #21: On the Beaten Path by Robert Alden Rubin.

On the Beaten Path: An Appalachian Pilgrimage by Robert Alden Rubin
238 pages
Published 2000
Read from March 22 to March 23
Rating: ★½ out of 5

It's easy to pick out a proverbial A-list of long-hike narratives: Cheryl Strayed's Wild, Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods -- both big bestsellers, both turned into movies, both with general audience appeal (Strayed's Oprah-ready story of climbing up from rock bottom, Bryson's Brysonesque humor) and noticeable cultural impact. It helps that there are, to my knowledge, only two such books. Separating the B-list from the C-list is more subjective, a matter of taste as much as a calculus of publishing house cachet, promotional effort, copies sold, and so on. I'd say Almost Somewhere, I Promise Not to Suffer, and The Cactus Eaters are securely on the B-list, at least demonstrating an effort toward general readership, while The Wild Birds' Song and AWOL on the Appalachian Trail are confirmed C-listers, doggedly niche, making no pretense at telling a broader, relatable life story beyond "There's this trail and I wanted to hike it."

I made up this categorization system on the spot for this review in order to have a new angle to discuss yet another hiking book: On the Beaten Path, put out by some no-name press (currently a subsidiary of Globe-Pequot, pumping out the likes of Hemingway's Guns and Mark Twain for Cat Lovers), with no driving personal narrative beyond "I was depressed and didn't like my job, so I quit to hike the AT," slots comfortably within the C-listers. Hypothetically, its author could have the makings of a better or bolder writer than other C-listers, but the problem is, he knows it -- and he seems to think he's a better writer than he actually is, to boot. (Not a hiking pun. Okay, maybe it is.) I almost quit Path in the first chapter, where Rubin goes on at length (that length: two entire pages of text) about the origins of his trail name, Rhymin' Worm, which originated as a gimmick account on a poetry message board -- a fact which still seems to impress Rubin with its cleverness. Perhaps I'm more blasé about such wonders than were the wide-eyed poets and netizens of the late '90s. Regardless, I don't think anybody, then or now, on or off the trail, needed samples of the Rhymin' Worm's doggerel "Ballad."

I came even closer to pitching the damn thing aside early in chapter two, when I encountered the line, "Who is this intrepid Rhymin' Worm of ours?" That's just pure canned corn right there. At that point, huffing at the page, reaching the end in this Rhymin' Worm's company seemed as out of my reach as the summit of Katahdin seems to an office-soft hiker on the Springer approach trail. Couldn't I just quietly stuff it into the library's return slot and await my next ILL'd hiking narrative?

Yet, countering that impulse: it's spring now, and I'm restless, eager for the woods and the rocks and all the momentary marvels of hiking. I've watched all the competently produced hiking videos on YouTube, and alas, I'm starting to run out of unread thru-hike books as well (or at least those contained in the Suffolk County library system). I resolved to tough out even the most tedious trudge through Rubin's supposed cleverness. Maybe there would be little rewards along the way, peeks at fiddleheads and the clean smell of damp leaves. Maybe it would all be worthwhile.

There are a few such moments: gazing at Comet Hale-Bopp above the summits of Georgia, the colorful rise of spring, a rainy night in a Vermont barn. But even after the worst of his cornball flourishes have been spent, Rubin is an unpleasant hiking companion. He exudes judgy negativity in a way I've never seen in a published first-person adventure story. Even Bill Bryson turned his signature misanthropy into something funny. Rubin indulges in bare-all psychological confessionism, but unlike Cheryl Strayed, the wounds he exhibits really aren't that interesting. He portrays himself as alternately seething and moping his way up the Appalachian spine -- and as a bigot on top of everything else. After hiking companionably for some distance with a trail buddy, Rubin suddenly has qualms about continuing on with him after learning the man is gay. He fumes for days (and pages of manuscript) after finding a bible burnt in a shelter. Rubin seldom stints a negative word about anyone else he encounters, except for one fellow sad middle-aged man with a dusting of literary pretension. Imagine that.

I suppose Path could be taken as an antidote to the golly-gee positivity of so much other trail literature, a warning of the psychological toil, the trudgery typically glossed over in other books with a few anecdotes of heavy packs and snoring companions. That, however, doesn't make it more of a joy to read.