Reviewed by Amanda Maria Gipson
Like most students at Penn State in the 2010s, I carried an overstuffed Vera Bradley. I used to cram that pirouette-patterned messenger bag so completely that I could only move from place to place with it perched precariously on my lap, the flap stuffed between my body and my wheelchair armrest. The pockets were full: pens, chargers, tissues, a mini stapler — we still printed papers then — an iPad, countless books, and whatever else I thought would help me get through the day.
In My Boots: A Memoir of Five Million Steps Along the Appalachian Trail suggests that Amanda K. Jaros took a similar approach to facing the unknown. She writes:
My loaded pack weighed in at fifty-eight pounds. Almost half my weight. I grabbed the shoulder straps and heaved it up onto my leg. The weight dug into my thigh… My spine compressed as it settled onto my back. I adjusted the hip belt, fiddled with my shirt under the straps, and pretended not to notice that the thing towered above my head (2).
Jaros’s prose is immersive, pulling readers into her over-prepared journey. Her detailed gear lists, which at first glance could easily be dismissed as extraneous detail, reveal the weight of her mindset: preparation equals security.
In My Boots is more than a compelling narrative northward. Jaros offers readers with interests beyond the Appalachian Trail much to appreciate. Anyone interested in feminist explorations of family dynamics and narratives of place will appreciate how Jaros uses setting as a lens for reflection and weaves flashbacks of childhood into her journey. As she hikes, Jaros reframes self-trust—not as foresight or preparation, but as the skills, instincts, and resilience to adapt, to face uncertainty, and to find solutions in the moment.
That moment comes when Jaros injures her knee. She asserts:
I couldn’t wait here for someone to save me. I had to move. I had to save myself (28).
Jaros does not share her internal experience with the reader and instead externalizes her struggle. She does not reflect on how she arrives at the decision to keep moving—she simply meets urgency with action. After regaining her footing, finding the blaze, and limping her way to safety, there is no grand realization—only a single, stark declaration:
I had to believe I could do this. I can make it to Maine (29).
At first, the lack of introspection felt jarring, but I came to see it as an intentional and compelling rhetorical choice. By withholding the inner logic of her transformation, Jaros invites the reader to share her uncertainty and fear. Because readers must navigate the text without the assurance of her inner monologue, the journey is no longer about having everything we might need—it is about trusting our own ability to adapt and keep moving despite uncertainty.
Writers who have been told to trust their readers should move In My Boots: A Memoir of Five Million Steps Along the Appalachian Trail to the top of their pile. Jaros not only tells us about developing self-trust — she invites us to lace up our own boots and cultivate it within our own journey.
Amanda Marie Gipson is a creative writer from Northern Appalachia with a background in community-based agricultural education. She earned her MFA from Wilkes University in 2023 and also holds an M.Agr from Colorado State University. She now facilitates storytelling workshops in rural and agricultural communities to promote resilience, wellbeing, and community engagement. When not working on a memoir-in-letters to her beloved Labrador, Amanda also serves as the fiction editor for Northern Appalachian Review. Her writing has recently appeared in Artium: A Journal of Fiction, Creative Nonfiction, and Poetry, and The Disruptive Quarterly.
