A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering
America on the Appalachian Trail
1998. Bill Bryson. Broadway Books,
New York. 274 pp. Hardbound. $25.00.
Bill
Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods fits nicely into
the expanding collection of adventure books, the one propelled
by a generation of couch potatoes-turned-weekend warriors.
One formula for this genre is simple: throw a hapless writer
and his equally bumbling buddy into an exotic location where
they must overcome a wide range of dangers—vicious animals,
quirky illnesses, discomforts of traveling, and, of course,
themselves. Through their misadventures the dubious heroes
meet eclectic, perhaps even archetypal characters, whose idiosyncrasies
are probed in the writer’s book. Thus said, it may take
some readers a while to appreciate Bryson’s biting sarcasm
and occasional self-depreciating humor, but his latest book
proves to be an interesting and entertaining read. Woven into
this story’s fabric are valuable lessons in natural history,
geography, botany, trail etiquette, and for the less adventurous,
the reassurance that there is no place like home.
Bryson returned to the States after 20 years as an expat in England. "Not long after I moved with my family to a small town in New Hampshire I happened upon a path that vanished into a wood on the edge of town," opens A Walk in the Woods. The intriguing path turns out to be that great equalizer, the Appalachian Trail, the longest continuous footpath in the world. The Trail meanders about 2,200 miles from Georgia’s Springer Mountain across 14 states and countless peaks to Maine’s Mount Katahdin. Each spring about 2,000 hikers set off to attempt the Trail’s length. No more than ten percent make it. Half don’t even hike beyond central Virginia, less than a third of the distance when traveling from south to north, as is the typical direction. In 75 years, only about 4,000 hikers have managed the entire Trail.
Bryson decides that hiking the Trail "…sounds neat!" and will help him become reacquainted with his homeland. He recruits high-school pal Stephen Katz, who is overweight, fickle, and not very outdoorsy, to join the quest that, from the start, doesn’t have a promising destiny. "It was hell…I was hopelessly out of shape—hopelessly. The pack weighed too much. Way too much. I had never encountered anything so hard, for which I was so ill prepared. Every step was a struggle," Bryson writes. Side-kick Katz is not much better off. Throughout the book Katz, who always trails hundreds of yards behind Bryson, repeatedly lightens his pack by dumping such necessities as clothing, water, and food. As a result many meals consist of Slim Jims, Snickers bars, and raisins. While understandably frustrated, Bryson compassionately acknowledges "…the trail was much harder for him than for me…It never escaped me for a moment that he didn’t have to be there." Ultimately Bryson admires Katz’s "fixated resolve, as if the only way to deal with this problem was to bull through it and get it over with." And so the pair trudge on.
Along the way a touching humanity emerges from the tongue-in-cheek griping. Bryson learns to appreciate hiking’s Zen-like qualities. "…the woods are great providers of solitude, and I encountered long periods of perfect aloneness." Later, he writes, "Life takes on a neat simplicity, too. Time ceases to have any meaning. When it is dark, you go to bed, and when it is light again you get up, and everything in between is just in between. It’s quite wonderful, really…you exist in a tranquil tedium."
Bryson retells the Trail’s early beginnings and peppers his story with lore and episodes of Trail Magic, a phenomena "that often when things look the darkest some little piece of serendipity comes along to put you back on a heavenly plane." Bryson also introduces readers to famed Trail characters like Emma "Grandma" Gatewood, who hiked the entire trail twice in her 60s, and Chicken John, who has an uncanny ability to get lost frequently on the well-marked Trail.
One comically black passage offers an interesting juxtaposition to Trail hiking. Breaking from the Trail to restock supplies and do laundry, Bryson sets off on a two-mile walk to buy insect-repellent at K-Mart. His suburban hike proves more challenging and dangerous than some sections of Trail, which explains why, as he states, Americans drive for 93 percent of all trips regardless of distance and purpose.
As the book’s subtitle implies, the subtext is about discovering America. Bryson reports about each of the ecosystems they hike through. There are reassuring moments, like when we learn about the rich plant and animal life in the Smokies. But most of what he reports is tragic: the disappearance of songbirds and the American chestnut blight of the 1950s, the devastating environmental legacy of mining and oil exploitation in Pennsylvania, and the unfortunate results of well-meaning U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service policies.
Anyone who has hiked extensively or for long periods will recognize similarities in their own experiences to those of Bryson—from the way the woods become your universe, or the disdain and subsequent appreciation for life’s modern conveniences, to the uber-hikers who take themselves and their gear much too seriously. All in all, this book deservedly claims a place in the hiker’s literary canon.
--Robert Moll
ZooGoer 28(1) 1999. Copyright 1999 Friends of the National Zoo. All rights reserved.
