Professor Hardcore’s Learning Curve Volume 2: Back to the Wild from 2525 (Professor Hardcore’s Learning Curve: Back to the Wild from 2525, Band 2)

Professor Hardcore’s Learning Curve: Back to the Wild from 2025 (4 vols.) is more than an Appalachian Trail hiking story. It is about the subject’s whole life and why it took him sixty-three years to complete the trail. How does a naive, spoiled, nerdy, pretentious Lutheran minister’s son come to be Professor Hardcore? Worsening post-polio scoliosis (up to 110 degrees) and the manifold responsibilities of an English professor/outdoor educator married with two children are the physical challenges. But these are nothing compared to the slow learning curve of this escapist dreamer. For reasons to be revealed, his story has a meta-dystopian framing with three narrators, each with his own font color. His chief editor, Overton, is an android with learning capabilities. His AI learning curve mirrors the subject’s and addresses the threat of climate change, of nuclear holocaust, of reoccurring pandemics, of out-of-control artificial intelligence, and the value of wilderness. Volume 2 has three parts: IV. Bad Flint, Good Flint (1968 -1973), V. A Stake in Salisbury (1973-1980), VI. Hey Joe, Go West (1980-1985). In Part IV, culture shock after moving to Flint with his dissertation unfinished leads to his radicalization and wandering astray in a heady climate of anti-war protests, drugs, and free love. Choosing between losing his job at Flint-U of M and finishing his dissertation, he opts for the latter, ends up pumping gas, and then working at a juvenile home. Rescued from Flint by a teaching job at Salisbury State College, Part V treats his floundering as a new Assistant Professor and searching unsuccessfully for male mentors. He pulls off an impulsive and poorly planned climb up Katahdin on the Hunt Trail with his two younger brothers and his 11-year-old daughter. His first successful hike on the AT is followed by others not so fortunate. In Part VI he visits his brother Tom twice to do three dramatic peak ascents in the Rockies, two in NM and one up Longs Peak in CO. In the person of Assistant to the President Joe Gilbert, former Boy Scout, ex-Marine, and wilderness enthusiast, he finds his mentor who introduces him to straight-line hiking on the AT In Rocksylvania. Under Joe’s guidance, he soon becomes advisor of the Outdoor Club (ODC), begins his twenty-year participation in SSC’s Orientation in the Wilderness in Algonquin Park (ON), and learns to teaching the Wilderness in Literature, with the approval of Gary Snyder. —- ISBN: 9798332414336