" No Walk in the Park shares Edward Abbey's witty outrage, Ellen Meloy's poetic humor, and Thoreau's precise attention to detail." —ZAK PODMORE, author of Life After Dead Pool In the footsteps of Desert Solitaire , these essays by an award-winning writer and student of culture sift decades of experience backpacking and boating for a stance that questions the mainstream. More than mere tales of bravado, they offer glimpses into the heart of the places explored, with the Grand Canyon as their center of gravity. Vivid, finely crafted, shot through with humor, self-effacing while deeply opinionated, No Walk in the Park shows what it means to meet nature on nature's terms. Read it at home in an armchair, or at a river camp, or stuff it into your pack before you go wandering. Join this author on a night hike to the great chasm’s bottom; trek forty days in his company below one rim, or snowshoe the other; visit a Hopi mesa for a ceremony; marvel at hidden rock art; sip epic solitude; tag threatened fish; and float next to Glen Canyon’s slickrock or below Niagara-size fleeting falls. The power of the outdoors courses though this writing and merges with the power of a writer in control of his craft. — FOREWORD REVIEWS Engelhard's love song to America's most beautiful desert. A stunning collection of essays. —SEAN PRENTISS, author of Finding Abbey Engelhard is what you hope for in a guide to the natural world-thoughtful but not earnest, lively but not glib. —EDWARD DOLNICK, author of Down the Great Unknown Creative wit and a deep understanding of our earth make this a mesmerizing read. —RICH INGEBRETSEN, Glen Canyon Institute co-founde r Focused not on the death-defying prowess of the adventurer, but on the wild glory of place. —ERIN MCKITTRICK, author of A Long Trek Home Avidly urges the reader to side with Nature rather than continue to celebrate the foibles of our over-abundant, misguided species. —JACK LOEFFLER, author of A Pagan Polemic The wilderness needs a voice like Michael Engelhard-one that hums with honesty, lyricism, and sheer daring. —SETH MULLER, author of Canyon Crossing A love song to the wild and a powerful argument for the need to keep some places untamed and untouched. —DERRICK JENSEN, author of Endgame A calming antidote to the crisis-ridden daily news cycle. —SCOTT SLOVIC, author of Going Away to Think ​The most thrilling nature read of the year. —SUPERSTITION REVIEW The writing is lively; at times humorous, at times philosophical, always down-to-earth and original, the way a good book should be. —DEEP WILD JOURNAL Engelhard's prose is richly evocative, even poetic. Just as he often stops to reflect on the big picture as well as William Blake's "world in a grain of sand," the reader might well do the same—pause to savor a phrase, a sentence, a paragraph, or an entire essay. If you like to meander, explore, and be surprised by what you find, you will not be disappointed. —SALT LAKE CITY WEEKLY The landscape holds values intrinsic to itself. Engelhard calls the reader back to these values, beyond the recreation economy, by showing the power of these places. —THE DURANGO TELEGRAPH Part history, part memoir, and part ecological critique of development and the recreation industry. Engelhard's prose throughout No Walk in the Park is reflective, curious, and radiant. —EARTH ISLAND JOURNAL ​ ​ ​ Michael Engelhard  worked for twenty-five years as an outdoor instructor and wilderness guide in Alaska and the canyon country. He received a Master's degree in cultural anthropology from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, where he also taught very briefly—indoor classrooms just weren't his thing.  He is the recipient of a National Outdoor Book Award, a Rasmuson Individual Artist Award, a Foreword INDIES and Independent Publisher Book Award, and of three Alaska Press Club Awards. His books include  Ice Bear: The Cultural History of an Arctic Icon ; his memoir of a solo trip from the Canada border to the Bering Sea,  Arctic Traverse: A Thousand-Mile Summer of Trekking the Brooks Range ; and  What the River Knows: Essays from the Heart of Alaska .  A Luddite fence sitter and migrant by training and inclination, he moves wherever his needs are met best, just like the peoples and critters he so admires.