End to Ending

An Appalachian Trail Thru-Hiker's Story

Tanner Critz

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English

Flaming Brands
01 September 2025

Memoirs; Walking, hiking, trekking; Adventure holidays

End to Ending is both a raw first-hand account and a time-traveling reflection-a vivid memoir written by a young man who walked the entire Appalachian Trail in the 1990s, and now reissued with the clarity and insight of three decades gone by.

At nineteen, Tanner Critz heard whispers of a footpath stretching from Georgia to Maine. At twenty-one, he shouldered a heavy pack, said goodbye to his father at the trailhead, and stepped into a world where hunger replaced comfort, and solitude peeled away everything but the truth. The original manuscript-penned soon after his 1995 thru-hike-captures that experience with the voice of someone still buzzing from the wild. It tells of firelight conversations and snowbound missteps; of trail magic and tumult; of Vikings with trail names and minds cracking open in the mountains; of becoming one with the woods, not just walking through them.

Now, thirty years later, Critz returns to that trail-not with his boots, but with the reflective lens of age, fatherhood, and loss. This anniversary edition includes new chapters and commentary that deepen the meaning of the original journey. He watches his sons reach the ages he was then. He stands at the mirror of time, no longer the boy who hiked into the forest-but the man who walked out.

End to Ending is a book for anyone who has stepped into the unknown in search of themselves, or who wonders what becomes of the seeker when the trail ends. Poetic, gritty, and soul-searching, it reminds us that some journeys don't stop when the walking does-they echo for a lifetime.

By: Tanner Critz
Imprint: Flaming Brands
Edition: 2nd ed.
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 12mm
Weight: 295g
ISBN: 9798999715906
Pages: 216
Publication Date: 01 September 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Tanner is a lifelong seeker, storyteller, and teacher whose path winds through wilderness trails, martial arts dojos, and deep journeys of the spirit. At twenty-one, he thru-hiked the entire Appalachian Trail, an experience that reshaped his young adulthood and ignited a lifelong hunger for meaningful adventure. Thirty years later, after surviving a near-death illness that left him unable to continue his life's work, he found healing and transformation through the ceremonial use of ayahuasca. His memoirs-End to Ending and End to Beginning-bookend these two defining journeys.In both works, Tanner explores what it means to step away from the life we're handed and move toward the one our soul demands. With an eye for poetic detail and a reverence for hard-earned truth, his writing illuminates the path from breakdown to rebirth.Tanner is the founder and head instructor of Unity Martial Arts, a community dojo that weaves together Cuong Nhu, Brazilian Jiujitsu, and Tai Chi to develop power, presence, and deep connection. His teaching and writing share a common thread: transformation through discipline, vulnerability, and the courage to walk into the unknown. He lives and teaches in Little Rock, Arkansas with his wife and two sons, where he continues to explore the sacred space between endings and beginnings.

Reviews for End to Ending: An Appalachian Trail Thru-Hiker's Story

""Tanner Critz has written a lyrical, joyful, evocative book - - - part travelogue, part memoir, and part profound personal meditation on who we become when we've walked far enough to meet ourselves face to face. So clear is his gaze that after finishing this book I felt I had experienced the Appalachian Trail firsthand"" Kevin Brockmeier The Brief History of the Dead