A Walk in the Woods Return to Book Review Page Return to Home Page

By Bill Bryson

Harperperennial Library, 2002

Amazing subject material. Excellent writing. It is a combination that should make for an irresistible book, which this is except for one major shortcoming, which will be explained below.

The book is about what is possibly the greatest little-known natural wonder of the United States, the Appalachian Trail. Conceived and created during the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Trail offers an unbroken path along the Eastern U.S. from Georgia to Maine. It is truly “natural” in that it is not an asphalt-paved path, but just a route through forests, mountains and some bodies of water than must be forded chest deep. Every step is along government parks and nature preserves, with only some unheated shelters for sleeping and an occasional store to replenish the supplies that hikers must carry with them. The trail itself is so rough that many hikers who intend to go the entire distance quit after a few hours or less. Some just look at it and when they see that it is unpaved and not even a beaten-down path, quit without even setting foot on it. The route of the trail is so imprecise and irregular that no one seems certain as to its exact length.

Besides terrain that is largely unchanged since before Columbus, hikers face the challenge of night visits by bears and wildcats.

Being one of the most accomplished contemporary travel writers, Bill Bryson does justice to the majesty of this great national resource. And his narration of the pleasures of hiking the Appalachian Trail and the constant pratfalls that constantly confront those who challenge the trail bring the experience of hiking it to life. But while scores of determined perambulators set out in Georgia in the early months of each year and hike every meter of the trail until they arrive in Maine in the summer, Bryson is never among their number. He didn’t even hike the entire trail in segments separated by rest and recovery periods. Somehow, it is like a virgin writing about the pleasures of sex.