Two Sticks, One Path: A Journey Beyond Fear on the Colorado Trail
by Darrow Kirkpatrick
Kirkpatrick recalls his post-retirement journey along the Colorado Trail in this debut memoir.
The book opens in 1974, with the author battling hypothermia during a Boy Scout excursion in New Mexico. Despite this health scare, he writes, “the soaring Rocky Mountains had hooked me. I was falling in love.” The memoir then fast-forwards to 2015, when Kirkpatrick, then in his mid-50s, decided to hike the Colorado Trail, which he describes as “a greatest hits of Colorado’s best hiking.” Narratively structured around 28 segments of the CT in the order that the author hiked them, this trail memoir covers the logistics of his six-year, 500-mile quest and charts the ever-present tension between the landscape’s natural beauty and inherent risks. Interspersed throughout the travelogue are autobiographical vignettes that relate to such subjects as the author’s relationship with his father or his high-pressure job as a civil and software engineer. Honest about his mental health struggles, Kirkpatrick discusses self-doubt, depression, anxiety, and his use of meditation as a coping strategy. Trekking the CT required the author to navigate physical challenges, including chronic ankle injuries. He would ultimately use crutches to take the weight off his lower body (“The security they provide is critical if I’m to have any hope of completing longer, harder hikes,” he reflects early in his journey). The crutches would also be the source of his trail name, which inspired the title of the book: Two Sticks. The author of books on personal finances and an award-winning retirement blog, Kirkpatrick is a skilled writer whose storytelling effectively blends a childlike awe of nature’s beauty with honest personal insights and an appropriate touch of dry humor (he had scoffed at his father’s “‘unsophisticated’ palate” that preferred hot cocoa to coffee until stomach problems forced him to switch to hot cocoa himself as an adult). The author supplements the accessible prose with a glossary of hiking lingo, a chart detailing CT segments, and an accompanying website with photographs and maps.
An engaging, occasionally poignant trail memoir and reflection on overcoming personal challenges.