On a winter day in 2013, Tom Haines stood in front of his basement furnace and wondered about the source of the natural gas that fueled his insulated life. During the next four years, Haines, an award-winning journalist and experienced wanderer, walked hundreds of miles through landscapes of fuel—oil, gas, and coal, and water, wind, and sun—on a crucial exploration of how we live on Earth in the face of a growing climate crisis. Can we get from the fossil fuels of today to the renewables of tomorrow? The story Haines tells in Walking to the Sun is full not only of human encounters—with roustabouts working on an oil rig, farmers tilling fields beneath wind turbines, and many others—but also of the meditative range that arrives with solitude far from home. Walking to the Sun overcomes the dislocation of our industrial times to look closely at the world around us and to consider what might come next.

TOM HAINES has reported in more than forty countries and has three times been named Travel Journalist of the Year in North America. Formerly the staff travel writer at the Boston Globe, he has also written for The Atlantic, Seattle Times, Orion Magazine, and other publications. He is an associate professor of English at the University of New Hampshire.