Hurricane haunts hiking

Due to threats of thunderstorms and deluges from Hurricane Isaac, I didn't go hiking this week.  I did just finish The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry which has a great deal of resonance with me with respect to long distance hiking.  This wonderful book by Rachel Joyce is about a retired man who unexpectedly decides to walk from his home in southwest England to Berwick upon Tyne to save an old friend who is dying from cancer in a hospice .  The journey is as much an emotional journey as a physical journey and as much about his family as about his relationship to Queenie, the woman who is dying, but I was struck by Harold's transformation from a non-walker who seeks out B&Bs and cafe meals to an itinerant camper who lives off the goodness and generosity of others.  Like Forrest Gump, his long walk becomes famous and attracts all kinds of unwanted company ("pilgrims") but he finishes his walk alone, cold, hungry, and bereft.  In the course of his walk he reconnects with his bitter wife, his lost son, and the woman who is waiting for him in the hospice.  It is an absolutely wonderful book.