Hello Friends,
I am very happy to announce the release of my latest published work, Goin’ Back to “The Gap“–Tales of the Grand Canyon and a Hippy Youth, available now in both kindle and paperback formats on Amazon. As an introduction, I wanted to share with you this short post, explaining both the backstory of the book, and why I wrote it. I also invite you to get your own copy in either format, by simply clicking the link at the bottom of this post.
And now for the backstory:
In May of 1972, during the waning years of the hippy/counter-culture era, two good friends and I embarked on an extended hitchhiking trip from Seattle to the American southwest and the Grand Canyon. At the time I was 21 years old, had dropped out of college at the University of Washington, and was primed for some adventure, as were my friends. In March of 2017, 45 years later, my wife Tammy and I made another trip to the southwestern desert and the Canyon, in part so Tammy, who had never been there, could see and experience the Canyon for herself; and in part so I could visit again and enjoy an area that is almost spiritual to me. Back in ’72, for us it was sleeping bags instead of hotels, and roadsides and hitched rides instead of rental cars, but that did nothing to dampen our spirits. In those days we reveled in our freedom and the adventures of the road–the zeitgeist of the era–and we wouldn’t have had it any other way.
We had some amazing adventures on that hitchhiking trip, well chronicled in the book; but, it wasn’t all adventure. As anyone who has ever done extended “thumbing” knows, at times rides can be scarce, and you can get stuck on the road; spending hours, even a day or two at at some backwater location before scoring a ride out. Such was the case for my friends and I in the late spring of ’72, when we were stranded in a little “map speck” of a place called “The Gap” on the western edge of the Navajo reservation on Highway 89 in northern Arizona. It took us 12 boring hours, but we finally got a ride out of that place in the back of a fruit truck, and were happy to do so. You might ask yourself then, why, 45 years later, on re-visiting the Canyon and desert, was I so eager to go back to the Gap and see it again?
The Gap
This little book is the story of these two trips, taken almost exactly 45 years apart; the first an expression of freedom and adventure born out of the hippy counter-culture of the times; the second, at first a simple vacation so Tammy could at last experience the magnificence of the Grand Canyon; for me, however, a trip that ended up being so much more.
As to why I wrote Goin’ Back to “The Gap,” I have always felt there is great value in people sharing the first hand experiences of their lives. In this case I am writing about an era barely 50 years ago (the counter-culture era of the Hippies) that is now by-gone, yet its influence continues to reverberate. With this work It is my hope that, for the younger generations today, it will help illuminate the spirit of those times; a spirit that was so formative for many of their parents. I also just wanted to share the adventures of that hitchhiking trip, because I think they are interesting and a lot of fun.
On reading Goin’ Back to The Gap-Tales of the Grand Canyon and a Hippy Youth, I hope you feel the same.
(To purchase “Goin’ Back to The Gap–Tales of the Grand Canyon and a Hippie Youth” just click the link below)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09FKGGD4G
Copyright © 2021
By Mark Arnold
All Rights Reserved
One Response
As usual, Mark turns in yet another good read. I found the tale he wove to be entertaining, relaxing, and insightful. He has a way of throwing a bit of a philosophical slant on things that seems to hit a chord with me. I sincerely hope he will keep it up and write many more memorable narratives such as this, as well as some more of his other literary articles and sports commentaries.