At sixteen, Kenn Kaufman dropped out of the high school where he was student council president and hit the road, hitching back and forth across America, from Alaska to Florida, Maine to Mexico. A report of a rare bird would send him hitching nonstop from Pacific to Atlantic and back again. When he was broke, he would pick fruit or do odd jobs to earn the fifty dollars or so that would last him for weeks. His goal was to set a record - most North American species seen in a year - but along the way, he began to realize that at this breakneck pace, he was only looking, not seeing. Kingbird Highway is a unique coming-of-age story, combining a lyrical celebration of nature with wild, and sometimes dangerous, adventures, starring a colorful cast of characters.

Maybe not all that unusual a thing to do in the seventies, but what Kenn was searching for was a little different: not sex, drugs, God, or even self, but birds. What had been a game became a quest for a deeper understanding of the natural world. At sixteen, Kenn Kaufman dropped out of the high school where he was student council president and hit the road, hitchhiking back and forth across America, from Alaska to Florida, Maine to Mexico. A report of a rare bird would send him hitching nonstop from the Pacific to the Atlantic and back again. When he was broke, he would pick fruit or do odd jobs to earn the fifty dollars or so that would last him for weeks. His goal was to set a record - most North American species seen in a year - but along the way, he began to realize that at this breakneck pace, he was only looking, not seeing. Kingbird Highway is a unique coming-of-age story, combining a lyrical celebration of nature with wild, and sometimes dangerous, adventures, starring a colorful cast of characters.

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