A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson

From Barnes & Noble

Bill Bryson, whose previous travelogues The Lost Continent, Neither Here Nor There, and Notes from a Small Island have garnered the author quite a following, now returns to his native United States after more than two decades of living abroad. In order to rediscover America by, as he puts it, "going out into an America that most people scarcely know is there," he set out to walk, in the company of Stephen Katz, his college roommate and sometime nemesis, the length of the Appalachian Trail. His account of that adventure is at once hilarious, inspiring, and even educational.

From the Publisher

Back in America after twenty years in Britain, Bill Bryson decided to reacquaint himself with his native country by walking the 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail, which stretches from Georgia to Maine. The AT offers an astonishing landscape of silent forests and sparkling lakes--and to a writer with the comic genius of Bill Bryson, it also provides endless opportunities to witness the majestic silliness of his fellow human beings.

For a start there's the gloriously out-of-shape Stephen Katz, a buddy from Iowa along for the walk. Despite Katz's overwhelming desire to find cozy restaurants, he and Bryson eventually settle into their stride, and while on the trail they meet a bizarre assortment of hilarious characters. But A Walk in the Woods is more than just a laugh-out-loud hike. Bryson's acute eye is a wise witness to this beautiful but fragile trail, and as he tells its fascinating history, he makes a moving plea for the conservation of America's last great wilderness. An adventure, a comedy, and a celebration, A Walk in the Woods is destined to become a modern classic of travel literature.

Forbes

Very funny...Bryson's humor is winning and succinct; he has a knack for boiling down his observations to their absurd essences.

National Geo Traveler

A laugh-out-loud account.

New York Times Book Review - Dwight Garner

[Bryson is] a satirist of the first rank, one who writes (and walks) with Chaucerian brio.

National Geographic Traveler

A laugh-out-loud account....If you were to cross John Muir's writings with Dave Barry's you'd end up with A Walk in the Woods.

National Geographic Traveler

A laugh-out-loud account....If you were to cross John Muir's writings with Dave Barry's you'd end up with A Walk in the Woods.

Geographic Traveler

National

Publishers Weekly

Returning to the U.S. after 20 years in England, Iowa native Bryson decided to reconnect with his mother country by hiking the length of the 2100-mile Appalachian Trail. Awed by merely the camping section of his local sporting goods store, he nevertheless plunges into the wilderness and emerges with a consistently comical account of a neophyte woodsman learning hard lessons about self-reliance. Bryson (The Lost Continent) carries himself in an irresistibly bewildered manner, accepting each new calamity with wonder and hilarity. He reviews the characters of the AT (as the trail is called), from a pack of incompetent Boy Scouts to a perpetually lost geezer named Chicken John. Most amusing is his cranky, crude and inestimable companion, Katz, a reformed substance abuser who once had single-handedly "become, in effect, Iowa's drug culture." The uneasy but always entertaining relationship between Bryson and Katz keeps their walk interesting, even during the flat stretches. Bryson completes the trail as planned, and he records the misadventure with insight and elegance. He is a popular author in Britain and his impeccably graceful and witty style deserves a large American audience as well.

Steve Forbes - Forbes Magazine

A delightful, insightful, irreverent, oft-funny account of the writer’s attempt to trek the 2,100-plus-mile Appalachian Trail. Hiking the Appalachian Trail is incredibly hard work, with grueling terrain, frequently intemperate weather, a heavy backpack and no comforting motels and amenities at the end of the day. It combines beauty with a heaviness that Bryson convincingly conveys. His observations on the people he encountered during this unique journey read as if Charles Dickens had become a scriptwriter for Saturday Night Live. (16 Apr 2001)

School Library Journal

Leisurely walks in the Cotswolds during a 20-year sojourn in England hardly prepared Bryson for the rigors of the Appalachian Trail. Nevertheless, he and his friend Katz, both 40-something couch potatoes, set out on a cold March morning to walk the 2000-mile trail from Georgia to Maine. Overweight and out of shape, Katz jettisoned many of his provisions on the first day out. The men were adopted by Mary Ellen, a know-it-all hiker eager to share her opinions about everything. They finally eluded her, encountered some congenial hikers, and after eight days of stumbling up and down mountains in the rain and mud, came to Gatlinburg, TN. Acknowledging they would never make it the whole way, they decided to skip the rest of the Smokies and head for the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia-by car. Late that summer, for their last hike, the pair attempted to hike the Hundred Mile Wilderness in Maine, near the trail's end. They got separated and Bryson spent a day and night searching for his friend. When they finally were reunited, "...we decided to leave the endless trail and stop pretending we were mountain men because we weren't." This often hilarious account of the foibles of two inept adventurers is sprinkled with fascinating details of the history of the AT, its wildlife, and tales of famous and not-so-famous hikers. In his more serious moments, Bryson argues for the protection of this fragile strip of wilderness. Young Adults who enjoy the outdoors, and especially those familiar with the AT, will find this travelogue both entertaining and insightful.
-- Molly Connally, Kings Park Library, Fairfax County, VA

The New York Times Book Review - Dwight Garner

[Bryson is] a satirist of the first rank, one who writes (and walks) with Chaucerian brio.

National Geographic Traveler

A laugh-out-loud account....If you were to cross John Muir's writings with Dave Barry's you'd end up with A Walk in the Woods.

Dwight Garner

Don't look to A Walk in the Woods for forced revelations about failed relationships or financial ruin or artistic insecurity. Bryson is hiking the trail because it's there, and he's great company right from the start -- a lumbering, droll, neatnik intellectual who comes off as equal parts Garrison Keillor, Michael Kinsley and (given his fondness for gross-out humor) Dave Barry. -- New York Times Book Review

Kirkus Reviews

The Appalachian Trail from Springer Mountain, GA, to Mount Katahdin, ME consists of some five million steps, and Bryson (Notes from a Small Island, 1996) seems to coax a laugh, and often an unexpectedly startling insight, out of each one he traverses. It's not all yuks though it is hard not to grin idiotically through all 288 pages, for Bryson is a talented portraitist of place. He did his natural-history homework, which is to say he knows a jack-o-lantern mushroom from a hellbender salamander from a purple wartyback mussel, and can also write seriously about the devastation of chestnut blight. He laces his narrative with gobbets of trail history and local trivia, and he makes real the 'strange and palpable menace' of the dark deep woods in which he sojourns, the rough-hewn trailscape 'mostly high up on the hills, over lonely ridges and forgotten hollows that no one has ever used or coveted,' celebrating as well the 'low-level ecstasy' of finding a book left thoughtfully at a trail shelter, or a broom with which to sweep out the shelter's dross. Yet humor is where the book finds its cues—from Bryson's frequent trail companion, the obese and slothful Katz, a spacious target for Bryson's sly wit, to moments of cruel and infantile laughs, as when he picks mercilessly on the witless woman who, admittedly, ruined a couple of their days.

But for the most part the humor is bright sarcasm, flashing with drollery and intelligence, even when it's a far yodel from political sensitivity. Then Bryson will take your breath away with a trenchant critique of the irredeemably vulgar vernacular strip that characterizes many American downtowns, or of other signs of decay he encounters offthe trail (though the trail itself he comes to love). 'Walking is what we did,' Bryson states: 800-plus out of the 2,100-plus miles, and that good sliver is sheer comic travel entertainment.

What People Are Saying

Bill McKibben
Bill Bryson is an extremely funny man, the Appalachian Trail is an exceedingly magnificent place, and together they have created an exceedingly fine book.

Dwight Garner
Don't look to A Walk in the Woods for forced revelations about failed relationships or financial ruin or artistic insecurity. Bryson is hiking the trail because it's there, and he's great company right from the start -- a lumbering, droll, neatnik intellectual who comes off as equal parts Garrison Keillor, Michael Kinsley and (given his fondness for gross-out humor) Dave Barry.

Product Details

• Interviews & Essays
• Read an Excerpt
• Read a Sample Chapter

Interviews & Essays

Bill Bryson: Well, thank you for having me. My weekend has been terrific.

Bill Bryson: Well, what happened was, after living in England for 20 years, I moved back to America with my family in the spring of 1995, and settled in Hanover, New Hampshire, and discovered quite unexpectedly that the Appalachian Trail runs through the town. And that was what peaked my interest, originally. I found myself captivated by the idea of this immensely long hiking trail, and decided to try to do it. It was really as simple as that.

Bill Bryson: The very first thing to go was a can of Spam. I'm not sure that we even took it to the trailhead. I can't think of a particularly surprising thing I kept, but the one thing that was always real important to me was a book to read just before bedtime in the evening. I only allowed myself one book at a time, and it was essentially my most treasured possession.

Bill Bryson: My traveling companion was an old school friend named Stephen Katz, who was a somewhat unlikely hiking companion, because he was very out of shape (so was I, come to that), but he had the great virtue that he was willing to come with me. Although we had our squabbles from time to time, we actually became very very good friends, as a result of the shared experience, and have remained very good friends since leaving the trail.

Bill Bryson: Well, in our case, the two actually coincided. My favorite stretch of the trail, and the most beautiful, was Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. A big reason for this was that it was the first place where we got continuous good weather. Before that, we had a really rotten spring -- a couple of blizzards, and lots and lots of really cold rain.

Bill Bryson: I can beat up a tick. Ticks are indeed worrying, and we certainly checked ourselves for them, but luckily we didn't have any problem with ticks.

Bill Bryson: We started at the southern end in early March, and hiked north. Our intention at the outset was to hike the whole thing, but we realized after a few weeks that we were never going to do every bit of it. So, after that, we just tried to hike as much of it as we could and felt like doing. We hiked in lots of different places -- the two national parks, around the Delaware Water Gap, the Berkshires in Massachusetts, most of Vermont and New Hampshire, and the hundred-mile wilderness in Maine -- and did about 870 miles altogether. I still hope to finish off the trail one day.

Bill Bryson: No, when I first went to England, I didn't realize I would be staying so long. What happened was I met an English girl and got married and settled down over there. I had been back to America several times on visits, but I discovered when we moved back permanently in 1995 that living in a place, even your own country, is very different from visiting it. A lot of things had changed. For one thing, road maps weren't free anymore.

Bill Bryson: Well that question is very much easier to answer now, because I gather America has been eliminated, so I'm cheering for England and Scotland. Frankly, I would just like to see any English-speaking nation win it.

Bill Bryson: The question would be better phrased as, was there ever a time when we didn't. Seriously, the trail was wonderful, and incredibly rewarding, but there was hardly a moment when it wasn't also extremely hard.

Bill Bryson: The longest I was away at one stretch was six and a half weeks. It was during that stretch that I realized I didn't want to be away from my family that long ever again. So, after that, I was never away for more than about two weeks at a time. My wife was very supportive. She hates the separations, as I do, but she recognizes that this is the sort of thing I do to make a living.

Bill Bryson: My favorite book was

Bill Bryson: The AT itself is probably more secure than it has ever been. It has so many friends and admirers that it's virtually inconceivable that anyone could do anything terribly destructive toward it. The real danger is to the woods around the trail, in a more general sense. I'm no authority on environmental matters, but even a layman can see that there are a lot of stressed trees out there, and a lot of views that are nothing like as pristine as they were 25 years ago.

Bill Bryson: Certainly at least two people I know have read the book. One was Katz, who thought it was all bullshit, but very funny. And the other was was an Irish fellow we hiked with for a couple of days in the Deep South and who wrote to me after the book came out there. As far as I know, Mary Ellen has not read the book. She didn't strike me as a great reader.

Bill Bryson: It is certainly true that some of the more popular parts of the AT can get pretty crowded at certain times. I'm thinking especially of the two national parks, Mt. Greylock in Massachusetts and Mt. Washington in New Hampshire. But most of the trail is relatively quiet even at peak time. I suppose, on average, we saw two or three other hikers an hour -- hardly an overwhelming number.

Bill Bryson: I learned, I am greatly relieved to tell you, that bears are not really a threat on the Appalachian Trail. There are actually very few recorded instances of black bear attacks on the AT.

Bill Bryson: Baseball! I really missed that. I also missed the more emphatic weather of North America. I really like very cold winters and very hot summers. I didn't miss American commercials. As for how long we will stay here, we're not sure, but very possibly forever. My wife and kids love it here very much. Personally, I would like to be in a position to divide our time between the two, as I like them both very much.

Bill Bryson: Don't feel that you have to do every inch of it. There's this horrible idea that the AT is an all-or-nothing proposition -- that you either do it all, or you don't do any of it. My philosophy would be to do just as much of it as you enjoy.

Bill Bryson: Thank you for your praise. I don't know about finding my voice. Sometimes I feel as if I'm still searching for it. One of the nice things about writing, I find, is that you always feel as if you can get better at it. In terms of advice, the only real suggestion I can give is to persevere, persevere, persevere -- and get lucky.

Bill Bryson: To me, the biggest possible treat in life is to go somewhere with my family knowing that I don't have to write a word about it.

Bill Bryson: Yes, I do!

Bill Bryson: Just thank you very much for your stimulating questions, this has been a real pleasure!

Read an Excerpt

Read a Sample Chapter

Bear!

I sat bolt upright. Instantly every neuron in my brain was awake and dashing around frantically, like ants when you disturb their nest. I reached instinctively for my knife, then realized I had left it in my pack, just outside the tent. Nocturnal defense had ceased to be a concern after many successive nights of tranquil woodland repose. There was another noise, quite near.

"Stephen, you awake?" I whispered.

"Yup," he replied in a weary but normal voice.

"What was that?"

"How the hell should I know."

"It sounded big."

"Everything sounds big in the woods."

This was true. Once a skunk had come plodding through our camp and it had sounded like a stegosaurus. There was another heavy rustle and then the sound of lapping at the spring. It was having a drink, whatever it was.

I shuffled on my knees to the foot of the tent, cautiously unzipped the mesh and peered out, but it was pitch black. As quietly as I could, I brought in my backpack and with the light of a small flashlight searched through it for my knife. When I found it and opened the blade I was appalled at how wimpy it looked. It was a perfectly respectable appliance for, say, buttering pancakes, but patently inadequate for defending oneself against 400 pounds of ravenous fur.

Carefully, very carefully, I climbed from the tent and put on the flashlight, which cast a distressingly feeble beam. Something about fifteen or twenty feet away looked up at me. I couldn't see anything at all of its shape or size -- only two shining eyes. It went silent, whatever it was, and stared back at me.

"Stephen," I whispered at his tent, "did you pack a knife?"

"No."

"Have you got anything sharp at all?"

He thought for a moment. "Nail clippers."

I made a despairing face. "Anything a little more vicious than that? Because, you see, there is definitely something out here."

"It's probably just a skunk."

"Then it's one big skunk. Its eyes are three feet off the ground."

"A deer then."

I nervously threw a stick at the animal, and it didn't move, whatever it was. A deer would have bolted. This thing just blinked once and kept staring.

I reported this to Katz.

"Probably a buck. They're not so timid. Try shouting at it."

I cautiously shouted at it: "Hey! You there! Scat!" The creature blinked again, singularly unmoved. "You shout," I said.

"Oh, you brute, go away, do!" Katz shouted in merciless imitation. "Please withdraw at once, you horrid creature."

"Fuck you," I said and lugged my tent right over to his. I didn't know what this would achieve exactly, but it brought me a tiny measure of comfort to be nearer to him.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm moving my tent."

"Oh, good plan. That'll really confuse it."

I peered and peered, but I couldn't see anything but those two wide-set eyes staring from the near distance like eyes in a cartoon. I couldn't decide whether I wanted to be outside and dead or inside and waiting to be dead. I was barefoot and in my underwear and shivering. What I really wanted -- really, really wanted -- was for the animal to withdraw. I picked up a small stone and tossed it at it. I think it may have hit it because the animal made a sudden noisy start (which scared the bejesus out of me and brought a whimper to my lips) and then emitted a noise -- not quite a growl, but near enough. It occurred to me that perhaps I oughtn't provoke it.

"What are you doing, Bryson? Just leave it alone and it will go away."

"How can you be so calm?"

"What do you want me to do? You're hysterical enough for both of us."

"I think I have a right to be a trifle alarmed, pardon me. I'm in the woods, in the middle of nowhere, in the dark, staring at a bear, with a guy who has nothing to defend himself with but a pair of nail clippers. Let me ask you this. If it is a bear and it comes for you, what are you going to do -- give it a pedicure?"

"I'll cross that bridge when I come to it," Katz said implacably.

"What do you mean you'll cross that bridge? We're on the bridge, you moron. There's a bear out here, for Christ sake. He's looking at us. He smells noodles and Snickers and -- oh, shit."

"What?"

"Oh. Shit."

"What?"

"There's two of them. I can see another pair of eyes." Just then, the flashlight battery started to go. The light flickered and then vanished. I scampered into my tent, stabbing myself lightly but hysterically in the thigh as I went, and began a quietly frantic search for spare batteries. If I were a bear, this would be the moment I would choose to lunge.

"Well, I'm going to sleep," Katz announced.

"What are you talking about? You can't go to sleep."

"Sure I can. I've done it lots of times." There was the sound of him rolling over and a series of snuffling noises, not unlike those of the creature outside.

"Stephen, you can't go to sleep," I ordered. But he could and he did, with amazing rapidity.

The creature -- creatures, now -- resumed drinking, with heavy lapping noises. I couldn't find any replacement batteries, so I flung the flashlight aside and put my miner's lamp on my head, made sure it worked, then switched it off to conserve the batteries. Then I sat for ages on my knees, facing the front of the tent, listening keenly, gripping my walking stick like a club, ready to beat back an attack, with my knife open and at hand as a last line of defense. The bears -- animals, whatever they were -- drank for perhaps twenty minutes more, then quietly departed the way they had come. It was a joyous moment, but I knew from my reading that they would be likely to return. I listened and listened, but the forest returned to silence and stayed there.

Eventually I loosened my grip on the walking stick and put on a sweater -- pausing twice to examine the tiniest noises, dreading the sound of a revisit -- and after a very long time got back into my sleeping bag for warmth. I lay there for a long time staring at total blackness and knew that never again would I sleep in the woods with a light heart.

And then, irresistibly and by degrees, I fell asleep.

Reprinted from A WALK IN THE WOODS by Bill Bryson. Copyright © 1998 by Bill Bryson. Excerpted by permission of Broadway Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.