Ken Ilgunas

Today I’m featured in an episode of the podcast 99% Invisible. The subject is the right to roam in the U.K., with special focus on the 1932 Mass Trespass of Kinder Scout, which was a forbidden mountain in what is now the Peak District of Northern England. The Kinder Scout trespass is the main narrative in Chapter Three of This Land is Our Land, so I know my history pretty well. All in all, it was a fine episode from a podcast I greatly respect. I love how shows like these nor

In many parts of North America, the cost of camping has become outrageously expensive. I got a fresh reminder of this on a recent two-week road trip across a few Northeastern states (NY, Vermont, and Maine, plus Quebec). My girlfriend and I figured we’d set up our tent in cheap campgrounds along the way and find cheap airbnbs in the cities. In New York and Vermont, we managed to camp in free spaces (like in the Adirondacks) or on a patch of grass on new friends’ lawns. In Ca

In my last post, for the fifth anniversary of my first book, I did a little reflecting on the sales history of Walden on Wheels. This got me thinking about the book and decisions I made when publishing it. If there were two things I could do over, I might have requested a hardback edition and I might have included a photo insert. I never gave a photo insert a thought, perhaps because, back then, I had neither a good camera nor magazine-quality photos of my journey. But having

May 15, 2018 marked the five-year anniversary of the publication of Walden on Wheels. While my career as a writer has had its ups and downs, WoW has been, in my eyes, a complete success. Some stats… It has sold 44,000 copies, not including foreign sales or audio sales. This means it’s probably just under the 50,000 mark. It’s been translated four times (South Korea, China, Taiwan, and Turkey). It has 1,180 reviews on Amazon and 5,300 votes on Goodreads (4.5 stars and 4 stars,

My book release for This Land Is Our Land has been quiet. I’d gotten positive reviews from Kirkus, Booklist, the Greensboro News and Record, but it’s not until recently that I got my first big-time review, this time in, of all places, The Wall Street Journal–a newspaper with a center-right reputation. The review was not overtly positive, but neither was it at all negative. I can’t find one blurbable quote in it. You could say it’s perfectly neutral, and I’d argue that a perfe

I have a piece in Backpacker this month on the “Great Plains Trail.” In March 2015, I walked the trail with founder Steve Myers, for 100 miles over seven days. I came away a convert. Steve is a good guy and I hope the trail some day takes off.