A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

As part of our Wilderness Week series…
After moving to New Hampshire, Bill Bryson discovers part of the Appalachian Trail nearby and decides that walking the entire thing would be fun. After broadcasting his intentions, he realizes he may be in over his head and that’s before he reads a book titled Bear Attacks and buys tons of camping equipment at the shop where his teenaged son works. The Appalachian Trail (AT) extends over 2,150 miles, from Georgia to Maine, over a number of mountain ranges, forests and rivers; daunting to someone fit, much less “after years of waddlesome sloth.”
Overpacked and underprepared, Bryson sets off from the southern end one cold March morning. His amusing Slacker friend Katz, even more out of shape, accompanies him part of the way, carrying dozens of candy bars and grumbling about missing The X-Files on TV. You can imagine the bumbling progress these two make, which actually causes the reader to laugh out loud at times. While they do spend nights in tents outdoors, they also frequently “take breaks”, hitchhiking to nearby towns for a few days in a motel, while dining at Burger King. This categorizes them as sectional hikers, who only do segments of the AT at a time, as opposed to thru hikers who do it properly.
Along the way we learn a lot; about trees, salamanders, rocks, Stonewall Jackson’s narcolepsy and the destructive history of the National Park Service, “which actually has a tradition of making things extinct.” “Quite an achievement when you consider that these animals had survived…for tens of millions of years before the Park Service took an interest in them.” Not to mention the effect of the coal, oil and timber industry on this park and others. It’s all done with Bryson’s trademark humor and irony.
But even he cannot cushion the harsh realities of acid rain, tree diseases and the eradication of 70% of eastern songbird species since the 1960’s . He compares the difference in hiking in Europe, a more widespread hobby, where footpaths take hikers through farmland and villages, as well as wilder places. America, he says, has “an either/or” attitude. “–either you ruthlessly subjugate it…or you deify it, treat it as something holy and remote, a thing apart, as along the AT. Seldom would it occur to anyone on either side that people and nature could coexist to their mutual benefit–” This is the ingrained mindset that makes our national parks more popular than ever, even as we turn our front lawns into sterile golf courses.

Any of Bryson’s books, with their mix of fun facts, experiences and humor, provide a treat for the armchair traveler. In this particular instance, that would be granola, or perhaps a Snicker’s candy bar.
Broadway Books 1998 276 pp. ISBN 0-7679-0251-3