An inspiring narrative about finding purpose in the outdoors, healing in nature, and hope for veterans

She gave up everything: her home, her possessions, even her real name. She called herself Peace Pilgrim, put on her sneakers, and started off on her quest to walk thousands of miles all around America. Step by step, mile after mile, Peace Pilgrim traveled tirelessly, inviting everyone she met to consider a world where each person and each nation chooses peace. This true story about a little-known woman who sacrificed everything for her convictions inspires us to step out for what we believe in, gathering others to join us along the way.

Peace Pilgrim was born Mildred Lisette Norman to Ernest and Josephine Norman in 1908 on a poultry farm in Egg Harbor City, New Jersey. Her father was a carpenter, and her mother was a tailor. Mildred Lisette Norman adopted the name "Peace Pilgrim" in 1953 in Pasadena, California, and walked across the United States for 28 years. 'Peace Pilgrim: her life and work in her own words' was compiled by some of her friends in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1982. Composed mainly in her own words except for the reproduced newspaper articles and the introduction. There are comments by people she met while on her 28 year pilgrimage for peace.

With breathtaking descriptions and humorous anecdotes from his 2,176-mile journey along the Appalachian Trail, Paul Stutzman reveals how immersing himself in nature and befriending fellow hikers helped him recover from a devastating loss.

Wild Peace by Irene Latham and Il Sung Na is a lush, soothing mindfulness picture book about finding solace in the natural world. With lyrical text and whimsical art, Wild Peace follows a girl whose imagination helps her escape her frenzied home and discover the joys of nature. After enjoying the serenity of the forest, she is finally ready to return to her family, where peace welcomes all that is wild, and kisses the forehead of every child. When the world fills with noise and fury, and the days pass, all rush and scurry, it's time to step into the forest . . .

A transformative collection of essays on the power of walking to connect with ourselves, each other, and nature itself. In 2010, Jonathon Stalls and his blue-heeler husky mix began their 242-day walk across the United States, depending upon each other and the kindness of strangers along the way. In this collection of essays, Stalls explores walking as waking up: how a cross-country journey through the family farms of West Virginia, the deep freedom of Nevada’s High desert, and everywhere in between unlocked connections to his deepest aches and dreams--and opened new avenues for renewal, connection, and change. While most of us won’t walk or roll across the country, the deep wisdom and insights that Stalls receives from the people, land, and animals he meets on his pilgrimage have profound impacts for each of us. He shares how walking deepened his relationship to himself as a gay man, offering deep and clarifying emotional medicine. He confronts the systemic racism, classism, and ableism that shape and reshape the communities he walks through. And he invites readers to become awakened activists, to begin healing our culture’s profound separation from the natural world. WALK is for those who crave to feel and embody, not just know and study, their way through complex themes that live in each chapter: vulnerability, human dignity, presence, mystery, and resistance. With dedicated practices--like connecting to Earth stewardship, moving into vulnerability, and walking and rolling with intention--Stalls’ WALK is an urgent and glorious call to slow down, look around, and engage with the world in front of us. It awakens us to what we miss when we’re driving by, flying over, and rushing past what surrounds us. It’s an invitation to move, to connect, to participate deeply in the world--and to dissolve the barriers that disconnect us from each other and the living Earth.

Walking Toward Peace shares the intimate stories of veterans who, post-deployment, have wrestled with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Through a process called "ecotherapy," spending time in nature to promote healing and mental health, they have found new tools to deal with issues that have resulted from combat experiences: survivor’s guilt, nightmares, lack of trust, depression, hypervigilance, thoughts of suicide, and lack of purpose. Some veterans profiled here have gone to extremes, spending months on long-distance expeditions, like hiking the 3,100-mile Continental Divide Trail or canoeing the 2,320-mile Mississippi River. For many others, however, brief excursions in the outdoors offer an opportunity for healing. Author Cindy Ross examines current research and perspectives of professional therapists and provides information on organizations devoted to healing veterans in the outdoors. Each featured veteran is depicted in an illustrated portrait. Veterans share their stories, frequently as they sit by a campfire, describing wartime traumas and their present lives. Through their collective voices what becomes clear is that anyone suffering from any form of PTSD may discover the powerful comfort and healing that can be found in the outdoors.

Don’t miss The Long Goodbye: The Kara Tippetts Story on Netflix now, featuring Ann Voskamp, Ellie Holcomb, and Joanna Gaines! Kara Tippetts knows the ordinary days of mothering four kids, the joy of watching her children grow ... and the devestating reality of stage-four cancer. In The Hardest Peace, Kara doesn't offer answers for when living is hard, but she asks us to join her in moving away from fear and control and toward peace and grace. Most of all, she draws us back to the God who is with us, in the mundane and the suffering, and who shapes even our pain into beauty. Winner of the 2015 Christian Book Award® in the Inspiration category.

One line straight down. One line to the right. One line to the left, then a circle. That was all—just three lines in a circle. This bold picture book tells the story of the peace symbol—designed in 1958 by a London activist protesting nuclear weapons—and how it inspired people all over the world. Depicting the symbol's travels from peace marches and liberation movements to the end of apartheid and the fall of the Berlin Wall, Three Lines in a Circle offers a message of inspiration to today's children and adults who are working to create social change. An author’s note provides historical background and a time line of late twentieth-century peace movements.