A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
Read by Rob McQuay
Published: May 1998
Summary from Goodreads:
The longest continuous footpath in the world, the Appalachian Trail stretches along the East Coast of the United States, from Georgia to Maine, through some of the most arresting and celebrated landscapes in America.
At the age of forty-four, in the company of his friend Stephen Katz (last seen in the bestselling Neither Here nor There), Bill Bryson set off to hike through the vast tangled woods which have been frightening sensible people for three hundred years. Ahead lay almost 2,200 miles of remote mountain wilderness filled with bears, moose, bobcats, rattlesnakes, poisonous plants, disease-bearing tics, the occasional chuckling murderer and – perhaps most alarming of all – people whose favourite pastime is discussing the relative merits of the external-frame backpack.
Facing savage weather, merciless insects, unreliable maps and a fickle companion whose profoundest wish was to go to a motel and watch The X-Files, Bryson gamely struggled through the wilderness to achieve a lifetime’s ambition – not to die outdoors.
Confession:
It has been awhile since I have been on a true ‘hike’, I mostly go for short walks in the woods and parks near my house these days. I have also only been backpacking once in my life, which was enough. So I have to admire anyone who will do this on an extended basis and then be able to write about it in such a personable and humorous way for the enjoyment of others. This was a lot of fun to listen to as I took my own walk in the woods.
The narrator, Rob McQuay, does an excellent job bringing this memoir to life. I enjoyed listening to his voice. He does a great job of conveying the many emotions the author goes through on this trip, as well as voicing the other people he met along the way.
The book begins with a litany of all the different things that could happen to a hiker on the trail. The many diseases one could pick up, or the various dangerous animals that have harmed hikers in the past. I’m not sure I would want to ever go hiking again after listening to that. But as he points out, thousands of people hike this trail every year and only a very few only ever come to harm.
I grew up in New England and the Appalachian trail has sort of held a bit of fascination for me. Not being a much of a hiker, I have never ventured onto it, but always wondered what it would be like. The author does a great job describing all of the things that he went through on the trail as well as discussing the history of it and some other topics that concern the survival of the trail. He does go off a bit on rants about the National Park service and the US Forest Service and some of the things that they have done over the years that did more harm than good to the wilderness. But these rants didn’t take away from the story, they actually helped it along.
I also enjoyed listening to how his friendship with Katz, his hiking partner for most of the trip, changed over the course of their adventure. They didn’t always get along, but still looked out for each other.
This is an old memoir, he journeyed on the trail in the mid nineties, but there probably hasn’t been much change. It was interesting to see how different the trail was in the different states and how some of that impacted the quality of his adventures there. He ended up with only completing about 800-900 of the 2,200 miles of the trail, but he did some in each of the many states it passes through.
If you are an outdoorsy type of person and have never read this memoir, I highly recommend it. It is a very interesting look at the wilderness and how man interacts with it.
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