Last year I bought a copy of In Beauty May She Walk, Leslie Mass’ account of her thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail when she was 60 years old and finally got around to reading it last month, dipping into a chapter or two every night before bed.

Leslie fulfills a lifelong dream, and honors her father’s memory by hiking the trail. I have said before that I have a yen to hike the trail myself, all the way from Georgia to Maine, ever since reading Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods (one of my favorite books) several years back. Leslie’s book is a completely different breed than Bryon’s. She’s on a personal odyssey, a life experience beyond anything she’s ever imagined. There is none of the humor, extensive geography lessons and such that you’ll find in Bryson’s account of his attempt to hike the trail from end to end.

Instead, hers is a deeply personal story, and is all about her hike, what it smelled, tasted, looked, sounded and felt like. She shares the many exultant moments as well as the ones where she felt frustrated, despondent or just plain pissed off. It was as close to hiking the trail myself as I could get without actually setting foot on it. My only wish for the book is that it had included photos of her time on the trail, or some of the watercolors that she sketched on the trail. It’s clear from Leslie’s account that hiking the Appalachian Trail is no mere walk in the woods. It’s an arduous, painstaking, exhausting endeavor.

And yet rather than diminish my desire to walk the trail, her story has actually heightened that wish. Reading Leslie’s story has shown me that it’s not such a pipe dream after all. Maybe, just maybe, one day, I will.