Dancing with the Mountains

Alzheimer’s, Angels, and the Appalachian Trail: A Journey of Spirit

Inspired by his dying father’s dream of hiking the Appalachian Trail, Paul Travers hits the trail and finds that miracle in the healing power of America’s sacred mountains. Dancing with the Mountains: Alzheimer’s, Angels, and the Appalachian Trail: A Journey of Spirit chronicles Paul’s hike to raise money for the Alzheimer’s Association and prove that sixty is the new forty. More than a travelogue, it is a love story about fathers and sons, families battling Alzheimer’s, and the people and places along the Appalachian Trail. Sprinkled with humor and humanity, it is the spiritual response to Bill Bryson’s bestseller A Walk in the Woods.

On his pilgrimage, Paul eludes the FBI, meets his guardian angel, survives a lightning strike and a near drowning, encounters the ghost of a relative, acquires a trail name (Sondance), finds a field of dreams, walks off the war, solves the death of a Hollywood starlet, discovers Saint Francis and the Buddha in New York, embraces a religious cult, visits ground zero for the sixties hippie movement (Arlo’s not Alice’s Restaurant), receives a sacred stone from a Lakota medicine man, meets a female apostle, discovers his father’s parallel spiritual journey, and copes with the death of his parents.

His adventure ultimately reveals nature is not only the handiwork of God but the hand of God that leads each of us on a unique spiritual journey.