Appalachia Project: A Walk in the Woods, 1998

A Walk in the Woods, by Bill Bryson

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A Walk in the Woods, by Bill Bryson, tells the story of one man's attempt to walk the mighty, 2,000+ mile long Appalachian Trail, which begins in north Georgia and follows the Appalachian mountain chain through Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. Bryson writes in a dry conversational tone and mixes in geology, geography, sociology, biology, and history as they become relevant and/or entertaining. I'm including lots of quotes in this post to give you the sense of it. Bryson notes that the AT is run and maintained by volunteers. "All 2,100 miles of the trail, as well as side trails, footbridges, signs, blazes, and shelters, are maintained by volunteers--indeed, the AT is said to be the largest volunteer-run undertaking on the planet." This is a story in itself.

The real story, though, is the trail, the AT, the man against the trail. Here's Bryson describing his initial motivation:
"...It would get me fit after years of waddlesome sloth. It would be an interesting and reflective way to reacquaint myself with the scale and beauty of my native land. It would be useful to learn to fend for myself in the wilderness. When guys in camouflage pants and hunting hats sat around in the Four Aces Diner talking about fearsome things done out-of-doors, I would no longer have to feel like such a cupcake. I wanted a little of that swagger that comes with being able to gaze at a far horizon through eyes of chipped granite and say with a slow, manly sniff, 'Yeah, I've shit in the woods.'"

A typical overnight shelter for hikers on the
Appalachian Trail

I appreciate having this book on my mostly-fiction list of Appalachian books (thanks, Jeff Fite) because Bryson actually has his feet on Appalachia, the Appalachia that gives its name to so many concepts, regional commissions, stereotypes, and, yes, mythologies. I've developed the phrase "hands-on and boots-on" to describe certain types of work experiences and it certainly applies here. Bryson has done his research, his book-reading, his interviews and map scanning and could have probably written a pretty good book without physically touching the trail. But it's his personal commitment to experiencing the trail first-hand that makes the book compelling and important. He was kind enough to take us readers along in a way that feels authentic and engages us in a real feeling for this land. Beautiful.

A black bear momma with a huge litter of cubs; bears
are more feared in their absence unless you leave a
cache of snickers bars unprotected.

In the planning phases, Bryson became obsessed with mortal dangers of the expedition. Everything from mighty bears to poisonous bacteria and even murderous humans were explored. Appalachia's black bears filled his imagination with horror:

 "Black bears rarely attack. But here's the thing. Sometimes they do. All bears are agile, cunning, and immensely strong, and they are always hungry. If they want to kill you and eat you, they can, and pretty much whenever they want. That doesn't happen often, but--and here is the absolutely salient point--once would be enough."

And later on, from the bear's point of view:

"...to [bears] people are overweight creatures in baseball caps who spread lots and lots of food out on picnic tables and then shriek a little and waddle off to get their video cameras when old Mr. Bear comes along and climbs onto the table and starts devouring their potato salad and chocolate cake...There is one recorded instance of a woman smearing honey on her toddler's fingers so that the bear would lick it off for the video camera. Failing to understand this, the bear ate the baby's hand."

The more salient dangers, however, turned out to be blisters, bug bites, cold, and fatigue. As Bryson and his friend Katz set out in northern Georgia, they encounter unusually cold weather: "When I awoke, it was daylight. The inside of my tent was coated in a curious flaky rime, which I realized after a moment was all my nighttime snores, condensed and frozen and pasted to the fabric, as if into a scrapbook of respiratory memories."

And, in discussing the key experience of walking the trail: "I was coming to appreciate that the central feature of life on the Appalachian Trail is deprivation, that the whole point of the experience is to remove yourself so thoroughly from the conveniences of everyday life that the most ordinary things--processed cheese, a can of pop gorgeously beaded with condenstation--fill you with wonder and gratitude."

Even deprivation became boring. "Each time you leave the cossetted and hygienic world of towns and take yourself into the hills, you go through a series of staged transformations--a kind of gentle descent into squalor--and each time it is as if you have never done it before. At the end of the first day, you feel mildly, self-consciously, grubby; by the second day, disgustingly so; by the third, you are beyond caring; by the fourth, you have forgotten what it is like not to be like this."

Chestnuts grew huge, with as much as an acre
under leaf. Today, they are gone.

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Bryson's history of the forest intrigued me. For one thing, he pointed out that the woods have been in a constant state of change all the time, as Earth is not fixed in time, but that changes in the past 20-30 years are endangering the Appalachian region's living things in unprecedented ways. He points out the woods he was walking in would have been unrecognizable to someone hiking there even just 50 years ago. For example, the mighty chestnuts were prevalent throughout the range in living memory and every one of them is gone now. The fall color that we associate with maples and sumacs are a feature of the loss of the chestnuts. And, the woods Bryson walked in the 1990s will be considerably different today, with the loss of many evergreens to acid rain and other species to invasive species and other threats.

I am left considerably saddened. Even as I accept that change is a constant, indeed a necessity, for life on this planet, I grieve the thoughtless disregard for any but human needs that seems to drive change beyond the carrying capacity of the environment. The Applachian forest is a magnificent mega-organism. I wish we would take better care of it.

Bryson is also awed by the sheer scale of our planet. After weeks of walking, he covers only a tiny portion of the trail, and still it is farther than most people ever walk (in total) in their whole lives. When he gets to the top of a mountain, and looks out, he sees trees. Trees and trees and trees. Next mountaintop: same thing. I feel a bit reassured by this that the forest will probably outlive its human influences, but if we are not careful, we won't be around to see its next iteration.

A white mark painted on a tree serves as a trail marker on the AT.

Bryson and Katz repesent us on this journey. Bryson sort of represents the good boy scout character and Katz is the bad boy scout. Somehow, their pairing works, balances the rapture with the squalor, both of which are present in about equal measures on this mega-hike. They hike the southern part of the trail for about six weeks, and then head out on the Maine part of the trail later in the summer. Both of them have very mixed feelings about leaving the trail for good, even though they are in no doubt about the decision. Katz asks Bryson how he feels about leaving the trail. "I thought for a moment, unsure. I had come to realize that I didn't have any feelings towards the AT that weren't confused and contradictory. I was weary of the trail, but still strangely in its thral; found the endless slog tedious but irrestible; grew tired of the boundless woods but admired their boundlessnesss; enjoyed the escape from civilization and ached for its comfirts. I wanted to quit and to do this forever, sleep in a bed and in a tent, see what was over the next hill and never see a hill again. All of this all at once, every moment, on the trail or off."