Running Home

In the tradition of Wild and H Is for Hawk, an Outside magazine writer tells her story—of fathers and daughters, grief and renewal, adventure and obsession, and the power of running to change your life. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY REAL SIMPLE I’m running to forget, and to remember. For more than a decade, Katie Arnold chased adventure around the world, reporting on extreme athletes who performed outlandish feats—walking high lines a thousand feet off the ground without a harness, or running one hundred miles through the night. She wrote her stories by living them, until eventually life on the thin edge of risk began to seem normal. After she married, Katie and her husband vowed to raise their daughters to be adventurous, too, in the mountains and canyons of New Mexico. But when her father died of cancer, she was forced to confront her own mortality. His death was cataclysmic, unleashing a perfect storm of grief and anxiety. She and her father, an enigmatic photographer for National Geographic, had always been kindred spirits. He introduced her to the outdoors and took her camping and on bicycle trips and down rivers, and taught her to find solace and courage in the natural world. And it was he who encouraged her to run her first race when she was seven years old. Now nearly paralyzed by fear and terrified she was dying, too, she turned to the thing that had always made her feel most alive: running. Over the course of three tumultuous years, she ran alone through the wilderness, logging longer and longer distances, first a 50-kilometer ultramarathon, then 50 miles, then 100 kilometers. She ran to heal her grief, to outpace her worry that she wouldn’t live to raise her own daughters. She ran to find strength in her weakness. She ran to remember and to forget. She ran to live. Ultrarunning tests the limits of human endurance over seemingly inhuman distances, and as she clocked miles across mesas and mountains, Katie learned to tolerate pain and discomfort, and face her fears of uncertainty, vulnerability, and even death itself. As she ran, she found herself peeling back the layers of her relationship with her father, discovering that much of what she thought she knew about him, and her own past, was wrong. Running Home is a memoir about the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of our world—the stories that hold us back, and the ones that set us free. Mesmerizing, transcendent, and deeply exhilarating, it is a book for anyone who has been knocked over by life, or feels the pull of something bigger and wilder within themselves. “A beautiful work of searching remembrance and searing honesty . . . Katie Arnold is as gifted on the page as she is on the trail. Running Home will soon join such classics as Born to Run and Ultramarathon Man as quintessential reading of the genre.”—Hampton Sides, author of On Desperate Ground and Ghost Soldiers

In this easy-to-understand book, HomeEquity Bank CEO Steven Ranson and Executive Vice President Yvonne Ziomecki discuss the ins and outs of reverse mortgages and how they can provide Canadians 55+ with a secure retirement.

Denise is an English teenager and a member of the Jewish minority. Her mother died when she was a baby. Running Home describes her journey to adulthood, taking her through dysfunctional family relationships, confrontations with anti-Semitism and the discovery of the tensions and contradictions of the modern State of Israel. Those who help her on her path include her grandmother who was a refugee from Nazi Germany and a compassionate English Pakistani. Denise’s father and stepmother are observant Jews who are exasperated by her challenges to their values. At sixteen, Denise is itching to break loose from the suffocating affluence of her London home and is helped by her doting grandmother to escape to a Sixth Form Boarding College in the beautiful countryside of the North of England. But, before Denise finally leaves home, she discovers a startling secret about her mother’s death that will eventually alter the course of her life. She thrives at her new school until anti-Semitism and racism pollute the atmosphere. At University, she hides her true identity until her boyfriend reveals his own anti-Semitic views. Deciding to visit Israel, Denise finds out more about her mother. She falls in love with the country and a reserve soldier, but disaster strikes when he is seriously wounded in a military clash. Denise returns to England confused and disillusioned. She meets Imran, an English Pakistani whose support and wisdom helps her when her father falls seriously ill and asks for her help. What will the future hold?

What kid hasn't wanted to make their parents feel sorry for treating him badly? And how better to accomplish this than to run away? Here's a guide showing how, from what to pack (gum--then you won't have to brush your teeth) to how to survive (don't think about your cozy bed). Ultimately, though, readers will see that there really is no place like home. Like Judith Viorst's Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, here's a spot-on portrait of a kid who's had it. And like Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are, it's also a journey inside a creative kid's imagination: that special place where parents aren't allowed without permission.

A middle class, Midwestern family in search of meaning uproot themselves and move to their ancestral village in Croatia. "We can look at this in two ways," Jim wrote, always the pragmatist. "We can panic and scrap the whole idea. Or we can take this as a sign. They're saying the economy is going to get worse before it gets better. Maybe this is the kick in the pants we needed to do something completely different. There will always be an excuse not to go..." And that, friends, is how a typically sane middle-aged mother decided to drag her family back to a forlorn mountain village in the backwoods of Croatia. So begins author Jennifer Wilson's journey in Running Away to Home. Jen, her architect husband, Jim, and their two children had been living the typical soccer- and ballet-practice life in the most Middle American of places: Des Moines, Iowa. They overindulged themselves and their kids, and as a family they were losing one another in the rush of work, school, and activities. One day, Jen and her husband looked at each other–both holding their Starbucks coffee as they headed out to their SUV in the mall parking lot, while the kids complained about the inferiority of the toys they just got–and asked themselves: "Is this the American dream? Because if it is, it sort of sucks." Jim and Jen had always dreamed of taking a family sabbatical in another country, so when they lost half their savings in the stock-market crash, it seemed like just a crazy enough time to do it. High on wanderlust, they left the troubled landscape of contemporary America for the Croatian mountain village of Mrkopalj, the land of Jennifer's ancestors. It was a village that seemed hermetically sealed for the last one hundred years, with a population of eight hundred (mostly drunken) residents and a herd of sheep milling around the post office. For several months they lived like locals, from milking the neighbor's cows to eating roasted pig on a spit to desperately seeking the village recipe for bootleg liquor. As the Wilson-Hoff family struggled to stay sane (and warm), what they found was much deeper and bigger than themselves.

Little Mouse must find his way through the dark woods to get home to his family.

Running from Home chronicles Rita's flight from the Nazis as it was perceived by a young child. The sense of bewilderment, loss of home, and suffering from hunger and cold create an indelible mark upon her mind and do not leave when she eventually comes to America. Raised in different cultures, she never feels at home but is always the outsider, trying to reconcile her old life and experiences with her new surroundings. Her youth and adolescence are assaulted by the demons that have been imprinted on her young brain. Furthermore, Rita's father suffers from his own demons: financial insecurity, disenfranchisement, and constant poverty serve to reestablish her old fears and sense of loss. For Rita, the war is not over when the peace treaties have been signed. For more information, please see www.ritabross.com.

A foxhunt saboteur and demonstrator who served time in jail; a former 60-a-day smoker and drug user; a man whose choices almost broke apart his marriage-author Toby Estler knows what real transformation is all about: looking for, discovering, and learning from the opportunities in everything that life brings. His style is so honest, entertaining, and uplifting that, on first reading, you will want to keep reading Running Home straight through to the finish line, before returning again and again to experience the inspiration of the moving meditations.Each chapter in this book offers you opportunities for: .Discovering how to carry the inspiration and joy from running or other sport deeper into your personal and professional life..Enhancing your running efficiency..Finding creative solutions to challenges in any area of your life..Establishing, nurturing, and deepening your relationship with the very best of who you are..Enjoying the peace and calm of your workouts throughout your entire day..Experiencing deeper spiritual awareness, authenticity, and wholeness