Rootstock Publishing, a Montpelier-based publisher and imprint of Multicultural Media, Inc., announces the June 22nd release of Walking Home: Trail Stories, a memoir of thru-hiking Vermont’s Long Trail at age 60, by Celia Ryker, of Bridgewater Corners, Vermont and Michigan.
Walking Home is “a fascinating narrative,” says Jennifer Belton, former White House Library Director. The memoir weaves stories of Ryker’s childhood and lost family members alongside luscious descriptions of The Long Trail’s woodland path, wildlife, and Green Mountains. It is an honest account of the author’s arduous journey accomplishing a long-distance hike with health challenges.
Ryker was diagnosed with a brain stem virus and has residual balance issues from that and from head injuries she sustained as a child. Her right leg had also sustained multiple fractures over the years as a farmer and horse trainer, but she was inspired to long-distance hike after reading the stories of other hikers with agility issues. When she turned 60, she knew it was time to act.
“I thought I was writing an instructive booklet for the first-time geriatric distance hiker, but the book put on its own boots and took me on a different path,” says author Celia Ryker. “I would like the reader to put down my book and go out and buy new dresses, walking shoes, paintbrushes, or tennis rackets. Whatever it is that they have been thinking about doing and haven’t found the time, or think they can’t do because of other constraints,” she says.
Ryker’s first career was training horses, teaching and campaigning students on southeast Michigan’s local hunter jumper circuit. After thirty years she went back to school for gardening and landscape design. Walking Home is her first book. Ryker and her husband Don live between Vermont and Michigan with their border collie, Flurry.
Walking Home: Trail Stories is available for the book trade at Ingram. The public can pre-order at local bookstores, Amazon, and anywhere books are sold, and the publisher’s website (www.rootstockpublishing.com).
ADVANCE PRAISE for WALKING HOME:
“Reading Walking Home, my astonishment that a woman who had never slept in a tent and had balance issues would undertake an almost 300-mile backpacking trek on one of the toughest trails in North America matured into something deeper: an appreciation that being in touch with nature helps us be in touch with ourselves.”
—D.W. Allen, author of Dappled Psychiatric
“If you have ever wanted to become a hiker or a long-distance walker, there is no better way to begin your journey than by joining Celia in Walking Home… It is also a goldmine of information.”
—Felicity Vaughan Swayze, author of War Torn: A Family Story
“While hiking the Long Trail may not be on everyone’s bucket list, Celia inspires us with her memoir to try something that will truly challenge ourselves, to take risks and to go forward into the unknown. She invites us to find our own way to leave the world behind and see what we can discover about ourselves, as she does, on our own challenging adventure.”
—Anne Richter, journalist/writer
“Celia Ryker hiked 272 miles along Vermont’s Green Mountains from the Massachusetts border to Canada, following the Long Trail, the oldest long-distance hiking trail in the United States. Through it all she details her interactions with the land, the fellow hikers she meets, and the memories it evokes...A fascinating narrative.”
—Jennifer Belton, former White House Library Director
Release Date: June 22, 2021 / 236 pages / 6 x 9 / ISBN: 978-1-57869-053-4 / $16.95 / Memoir/Hiking / Distributed Worldwide by Ingram
About Rootstock Publishing
With offices in downtown Montpelier, Vt., Rootstock Publishing is a hybrid publisher and an imprint of Multicultural Media, Inc. Their books have won multiple book awards such as the IPPY, Foreword INDIES, the IBPA Ben Franklin Award, and Independent Book Publishers of New England awards, among others. They publish poetry, fiction, nonfiction, YA and picture book manuscripts by authors from all over the globe. Learn more at rootstockpublishing.com.