A Walk in the Woods

                                                                                                                                                       Travel

A Walk in the Woods

Bill Bryson

Appalachian Trail, the ‘Granddaddy of long hikes’ runs for about 2,200 miles through the lush woods of Appalachian Mountains along the eastern sea board of USA from Maine in the north to Georgia in the south. Bill Bryson has a brilliant idea of embarking on this long hike and he has Stephen Katz, last seen with him in Europe in Neither Here nor There, as his companion. And the result is this humorous account of the trek. Both Katz and Bryson are not trekkers by creed or profession and the trek is daunting. They have to trudge through deep woods for days without coming across any human habitation, clamber up innumerable peaks and descend the treacherous slopes repeatedly, weather beastly blizzards and incapacitating heavy snow and sleep in tents or open shelters in perpetual fear of bears and jungle cats. Given their physical fitness or the lack of it, it would have been miraculous if they had completed the trek. After five hundred miles they return home. For four months Bryson treks short distances along various stretches of Appalachian Trail and Katz joins him in the end, to trek the last hundred miles of the most difficult part of the trek in Maine. But they abandon this too, after about fifty miles.

            An account of walk through 2200 miles of wooded mountain trail would get tedious after a while. Bryson candidly admits that the Appalachian Trail doesn’t offer much variety and during the trek there are fewer sights but for the endless jungle all around. Bryson breaks the monotony of the narrative by writing about the history of the trail, the efforts of the authorities or absence of these to maintain it, bears, snow lions and other animals of the region, hypothermia and heat exhaustion, the walking or the sedentary habits of Americans in general, restaurants and rest houses along the way and co-trekkers he meets in his journey. But, in spite of his attempts to bring in variation, book does read repetitive occasionally and a little drab at places. There is his inimitable humour, guffaw-inducing, incredibly funny dialogues and anecdotes, statistics presented in a highly readable and understandable format and above all his effortless prose, elegant, pleasing and plain at the same time. I wouldn’t say this is his best book but is surely ample value for money.