Hunting for Hope begins with a hiking trip in the Rockies meant to get at the root of the strife between the author and his teenage son. On their first day in the mountains, Jesse lashes out: "You look at any car, and all you think is pollution, traffic, roadside crap. You say fast food's poisoning our bodies and TV's poisoning our minds....You make me feel the planet's dying, and people are to blame, and nothing can be done about it. There's no room for hope. Maybe you can get along without hope, but I can't." This confrontation - and the realization that Sanders's despair has darkened his son's world - is what sets him on the deeply felt father's journey that is at the heart of Hunting for Hope. He sets out to accumulate, in a narrative threaded with the moving remainder of the father-son trip, his own reasons for facing the future with hope.