Book Recommendation: A Walk in the Woods, by Bill Bryson

Hey there readers,

Last week I said I was going to post more either about Denmark or about gun control (and perhaps both) but until I've figured out what I'm going to say about either I wanted to recommend one of my favorite books that I recently reread.

We've probably all heard the saying that books have the power to take us on journeys to places we've never been before. As a big fan of fantasy and science fiction, I have to agree with this statement (how else could we understand Middle Earth, Westeros, Arrakis, or even what Earth could be like in the future?) but I think it rings true especially for travel writing, and there is no better travel writer in my mind than Bill Bryson.

Bryson's A Walk in the Woods, published originally in 1997, is his account of walking on the Appalachian Trail, mostly with his old friend Stephen Katz. Some of you may be familiar with the Appalachian Trail, but for those who aren't, the AT (as Bryson commonly abbreviates it) is a hiking route that stretches from Georgia to Maine and is considered one of the longest hikes in the US if not the world. Most who try to hike the whole thing at once are young, physically fit people who can take several months off from school or work, buy a bunch of backpacking gear (or perhaps use what they already own), and want the challenge of walking through the wilderness for several months.

Bill Bryson and Stephen Katz do not fit this description. They are older, out of shape, and used to the creature comforts of home. And that is precisely what makes this book so good. I like hiking, and I like seeing nature, but I know that I don't like sleeping in tents or "roughing it" for days/weeks at a time. I get twitchy without good internet access and I'm certainly not physically fit enough to navigate some of the rougher sections of the AT. Through Bryson, I get to experience what it would be like if I went on the Appalachian Trail without leaving the comfort of the living room or commuter train. He has no trouble describing all the times where he and Katz realize they aren't "backpacking material," but makes it clear that there are still moments where he is glad he chose to walk the AT. In one particular moment, Katz loudly complains that were he at home, he'd be drinking cream soda and watching a new episode of the X-Files (which sounds a lot like what I did for my last Winter Break), but in the next moment, Bryson muses that while he misses TV and soda, he's gained an appreciation for walking in the woods for hours at a stretch, to the point where everything kind of blurs together and he gets to be alone with his thoughts, although interrupted at points by Katz (and would be even better with a package of Oreos). He points out that most of the literature on the AT glosses over moments like these, and occasionally some of the greater hazards of the trail, which makes his story seem all the more authentic.

Bryson takes his own experience and adds a wealth of knowledge about the trail as well as nature and national parks across the US. Thanks to these parts of the book, I felt like I was reading more than just a travel diary and was really learning something (I'm tempted to add "You're learning while you're having fun!" or something along those lines, but I hate it when people do that). There are moments where he adopts the tone of a worried conservationist, and points out that our forests and their plant and animal life are dwindling if not being rapidly destroyed, but he grounds everything he says in cold hard facts. Moreover, this tone never lasts so long that I felt like he was hitting me over the head with depressing facts about nature.

Bill Bryson is a great scholar with a witty, fantastic sense of humor, but more than that, he is a sublime storyteller. For anyone with a passing interest in nature, or just a desire to read some great travel writing, I highly recommend Bill Bryson's best book, A Walk in the Woods. At about 300 pages, it's what I'd call a short read, and his writing style ensured that it never felt like I had to force myself along.

Cheers!