A Walk in the Woods: A Book Review

By Annelie Weber

In A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail, Bill Bryson wrote about his adventures on the trail together with his old friend Katz. I .would recommend this book to all who want to learn more about eastern United States and the Appalachian Trail, but who do not want to read an old, boring, and weighty tome. Bill Bryson managed to combine telling his adventures and mediating knowledge in a funny and interesting way.

A Walk in the Woods is not just a book about the Appalachian Trail: it is a book about Bill Bryson’s experiences in the woods. It is the story about his and Katz’s ups and downs on the trail; their struggles with the weather, the woods, each other, and themselves; and of their cognition that the wilderness is stronger than they are. “All that we had experienced and done—all the effort and toil, the aches, the damp, the mountains, the horrible stodgy noodles, the blizzards, the dreary evenings with Mary Ellen, the endless, wearying, doggedly accumulated miles— all that came to two inches” (105), Bill realized while looking at a map of the whole trail after reaching Gatlinsburg. But it is also their story about making new friends in the woods, or at least meeting interesting people. On March 21, Bill and Katz were surprised by a blizzard and shared a shelter with Jim and his son Heath for the night. Bill and Katz started hiking to a camping ground in the morning while Heath and Jim went back to their car. On the road to the camping ground they met again:
“The driver’s window hummed down. It was Jim and Heath. They had come to let us know they had made it, and to make sure we had likewise. ‘Thought you might like a lift to the campground,’ Jim said” (79).
But all their troubles finally culminated in their capitulation, when Bill finally found Katz after he had been lost in the woods for a day: “’You want to go home?’ I asked. He thought for a moment. ‘Yeah. I do.’ ‘Me, too’” (266).
Bill Bryson also added many interesting facts about the areas he was hiking through. He included facts about the history of the trail, like the story about the first person who hiked the trail from end to end in one summer:
“When Shaffer completed the walk in early August, four months to the day after setting off, and reported his achievement to conference headquarters, no one there actually believed him. He had to show officials his photographs and trail journal and undergo a ‘charming but thorough cross examination,’ as he put it in his later account of the journey, Walking with Spring, before his story was finally accepted”(111).
Bill Bryson wrote about the history of the Appalachians themselves—“Once, eons ago, the Appalachians were of a scale and majesty to rival the Himalayas” (190)—and added interesting information about the flora and fauna in the Appalachians, such as, “According to the writer Hiram Rogers, grassy balds cover just 0.015 percent of the Smokies landscape yet hold 29 percent of its flora” (93) and “Altogether, forty-two species of mammal have disappeared from America’s national parks this century,¨ (92).
The book is written in a very humorous style. Bill Bryson writes in a very sarcastic way and doesn’t mince words. A good example is his account of the first time he realized what he had gotten himself into by deciding to hike the Appalachian Trail, when he was buying his equipment:
“’You’ll need a raincover too, of course.’ I blinked. ‘A raincover? Why?’ ‘To keep out the rain.’ ‘The backpack’s not rainproof?’ He grimaced as if making an exceptionally delicate distinction. ‘Well, not a hundred percent….’ This was extraordinary to me. ‘Really? Did it not occur to the manufacturer that people might want to take their packs outdoors from time to time? Perhaps even go camping with them. How much is this pack anyway?’ ‘Two hundred and fifty dollars’” (10).
A few weeks before Bill’s departure, his school friend Stephen Katz called to offer his company on the trail. Glad that he did not have to hike alone, Bill accepted without asking any questions. Katz turned out to be overweight and a recovering alcoholic, even less prepared for the hike than Bill. That, of course, led to a few quite funny situations, because Katz is not exactly what one would picture as a hiker, and he is not the smartest:
“’Well, I didn’t want to alarm you, but I also got kind of lost.’ ‘How?’ ‘Oh, between losing you and coming upon the mud slick, I tried to get to a lake I saw from the mountain.’ ‘Stephen, you didn’t.’ ‘Well, I was real thirsty, you know, and it didn’t look too far. So I plunged off into the woods. Not real smart, right?’” (265).
A Walk in the Woods is a great, funny and interesting book about two men who walked the Appalachian Trail, saw its beauty and wilderness, met many people who shared the same goal to hike the trail, and made friends, but finally gave up. After reading this book, I see the United States with different eyes. I always thought about it as an industrial nation with big cities and many overweight people. But what Bill Bryson said about the walking distance of an average American shocked me: ”Every twenty minutes on the Appalachian Trail Katz and I walked farther than the average American walks in a week” (128). It made me feel like I should go for a walk more often, go camping or even try to hike the Appalachian Trail. I have never been an outdoor person, so I know that I would never be able to the whole 2200 miles—probably not even anything close. But the details of the trail in A Walk in the Woods and the nature Bryson describes seemed so appealing to me that I seriously thought about it. I wonder why more people don’t do something for their health and try to increase their average walking distance. This book is not just for people who like to be outdoors; it makes the reader want to go camping, even if he or she normally hates it.