A Walk In The Woods

My mom liked to say that from Kansas, you could get to somewhere fun in a mere 12 hour drive.  The beaches on the Gulf were 12 hours to the south, the mountains 12 hours to the west, and deserts and cacti 12 hours to the southwest.  We spent many summers in Colorado or Santa Fe, and most vacations involved some rustic cabin living and lots of hiking.  We had our favorite trails-- the Alpine Trail near where we stayed in Buena Vista, CO and the ski basin in Santa Fe.  But these trails would represent just a centimeter of the 2,200 miles of the Appalachian Trail from Georgia up to Maine.  In the mid-90s Bill Bryson and his friend Steven Katz decided to hike the AT over the course of several months, and A Walk In The Woods is Bryson's record of that adventure.
I started this book as part of the Emergency Holiday Challenge and remembered Steph loving it and was even told by someone in my yoga class how funny it was.  And while it was funny, it was also wistful and kind of sad.  Bryson would intersperse details of the hike (lots of walking, lots of trees) with facts about the AT and the environmental changes.  We've all heard about the demise of the passenger pigeon, and the relatively quick fell of the American Chestnut trees...Bryson lectures us just to the point of depression and then says, "back to the trail!"
Even though this book is just about 10 years old, at times it felt dated.  Bryson writes with disdain about people to bring modems hiking so they can share stories from the trail (um, that would be blogging) and writes with amazement that some people have brought satellite tracking devices (what we now know as GPS!).  Every few days they arrive at a small town where they check in with their families from payphones.  Cell phones were not rampant yet.
2,200 miles is a lot of hiking and without giving anything away, a six-mile day hike on a trail of woods, streams and mountains maybe gives you the same idea as 6 months of the same.  Day hikes let you get back to the relative warmth of a cabin (and maybe access to some soothing hot springs) by 6 pm.  Nevertheless, I feel lucky that we have the luxury of wilderness to hike in, that despite the extinction of species, we generally value unspoiled nature.
4/5 netflix stars