While an epic fantasy, The Lord of the Rings is fundamentally a story about a monumental journey on foot. The hobbits Frodo and Sam's trek across Middle-earth to destroy the One Ring is a masterclass in literary hiking, where the landscape itself is a formidable character.
Tolkien’s detailed descriptions of forbidding mountains, treacherous marshes, and haunted forests are immersive and tangible.
The quest shows how a long walk through wild territories can test friendships, courage, and character, connecting with experiences familiar to any hiker: battling the elements, exhaustion, and discovering strength deep within oneself.
Cormac McCarthy’s haunting, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel explores hiking as a means of survival in a post-apocalyptic landscape. A father and son journey on foot through an ash-covered America, pushing a shopping cart with their meager possessions.
Their walk is a grim, arduous pilgrimage toward an uncertain coast, filled with threats lurking along empty roads and through ruined cities. McCarthy’s sparse, powerful prose underscores the relentless forward movement where every step is a victory against despair.
The simplicity of their journey highlights the profound human bond forged through shared hardship.
Set during the final days of the American Civil War, Cold Mountain tells the story of Inman, a wounded Confederate soldier who deserts the army and walks hundreds of miles home to his beloved Ada.
His journey is a perilous hike across a fractured nation, where he must navigate treacherous terrain, evade soldiers and bounty hunters, and rely on the kindness of strangers. Frazier contrasts Inman’s physical trek with Ada’s own struggle to survive on her farm.
The novel is a powerful ode to the primal urge to return home and the sheer endurance required to complete a long and desperate journey on foot.
In this charming novel, retired salesman Harold Fry receives a letter from a former colleague who is dying and impulsively decides to walk 600 miles across England to see her, believing the act will keep her alive. With no hiking gear, map, or training, Harold sets out, relying on hope and the goodwill of strangers.
His hike becomes more than a physical journey; it’s a meditative pilgrimage through his past, forcing him to confront his life, his marriage, and his deepest regrets. The novel beautifully illustrates how the simple rhythm of walking can become a profound act of reconciliation and self-discovery.
Jack Kerouac’s novel, a fictionalized account of his experiences with Beat Generation poets, celebrates hiking and mountaineering as a spiritual practice. The narrator, Ray Smith, is introduced to Zen Buddhism and the liberating joy of the outdoors by the charismatic Japhy Ryder.
Their hikes up the stark peaks of California’s Sierra Nevada are portrayed as a form of active meditation and a path to enlightenment. Kerouac’s energetic prose vividly describes the joys and challenges of mountain climbing, emphasizing simplicity, mindful wandering, and the spiritual renewal found in the wilderness.
This classic young adult novel follows thirteen-year-old Brian Robeson, who is stranded in the remote Canadian wilderness after a plane crash with only a hatchet. To survive, he must learn to walk the land—to find food, build shelter, and understand his new environment.
Brian’s short but critical journeys through the forest to hunt, fish, and explore are central to his transformation from a helpless city boy into a resilient survivor. Paulsen’s straightforward storytelling viscerally captures the quiet determination required for each new day and the personal strength forged through wilderness challenges.
Though centered on a cattle drive, this epic novel is fundamentally about one of the great journeys on foot in American literature. Two aging Texas Rangers lead a herd of cattle from the Rio Grande to Montana, crossing thousands of miles of untamed, dangerous, and breathtakingly beautiful territory.
The journey, undertaken on horseback and on foot, is the novel's central character, testing the bonds of friendship and forcing every character to confront their own mortality and dreams. It’s a story of grit, endurance, and the immense scale of the American West as experienced step by dusty step.
In a world devastated by a pandemic, Hig survives in an abandoned airport hangar in Colorado, flying his small plane but finding solace in hiking and fishing in the nearby mountains with his dog. His journeys on foot are a search for sustenance, security, and a connection to a world that is both beautiful and empty.
When a voice on his radio hints at another survivor, Hig embarks on a dangerous flight and a subsequent trek into the unknown. The novel is a moving exploration of survival, loss, and the hope that can be found in the quiet solitude of the wilderness.
In this spare and lyrical fable, a girl and her father are the last two humans on Earth, living in harmony with nature in a mountain forest. The father teaches his daughter how to hunt, fish, and walk the ancient paths of the woods.
The story is built around their seasonal journeys through the landscape, which is not an adversary to be conquered but a world to be understood and respected. After a tragedy, the girl must undertake a final, mythic journey alone, guided by a bear.
It is a profound meditation on humanity’s relationship with the wild and the timeless rhythm of life, death, and nature.
While not a traditional hiking novel, The Overstory is a profound journey into the world of trees and our connection to them. Several of its interconnected stories feature characters whose lives are transformed by walking in and living among forests.
A scientist learns to see the forest as a single, intelligent organism through her fieldwork; activists make a pilgrimage to the giant redwoods of the Pacific Northwest to protect them.
The novel reframes the act of walking not as a journey across the land, but as a journey into a vast, living system, urging readers to see the world from a deeper, more rooted perspective.