A GRIP ON THE MANE OF LIFE. AN AUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY OF EARL V. SHAFFER - Tecno-Libro

After serving four and a half years in the army during WWii-mostly in the battle-torn islands of the South Pacific-and along the way losing his best friend at iwo Jima, Earl Shaffer came home to Pennsylvania with a large dose of military depression. After rattling around for a while he decided to act upon a prewar dream of hiking the entire Appalachian Trail, a decision that was spurred by reading a magazine article stating that such a feat was likely impossible. Earl achieved his goal, and history s muse presented him with a personal niche in her gallery. Over the course of three decades he wrote a memoir of that hike which was published by the Appalachian Trail Conference as Walking with Spring. The book became an instant hiking classic. Most of Earl s writing was devoted to his first love, poetry. Earl penned more than a thousand poems during his lifetime, a trove that includes a respectable number of polished gems. in mid-career he returned to hiking. in 1963 he hiked five hundred miles of the Cascade Cr