Bill Bryson wrote A Walk in the Woods over 15 years ago, but I learned of it for the first time this past weekend as I was scanning the library's collection of currently available ebooks. I have read his books before (Lost Continent, most notably) and find them to be humorous and quick to read. I wasn't disappointed. At times, A Walk in the Woods is laugh-out-loud funny.
The deal is this: Bill has decided to hike the Appalachian Trail. He would prefer not to do this alone, though, so he invites basically all of his friends and acquaintances to join him. The one person who takes him up on the offer is an old high school buddy, Stephen Katz, whom Bill has not seen in roughly 20 years. Katz, as Bryson describes him, is recovering from his stint "as Iowa's drug culture," and is seriously out of shape and overweight to boot. He must gorge himself on donuts (or Snickers, or something else of that nature) regularly to avoid the seizures that have plagued him since his run-in with a bad batch of narcotics a decade earlier.
So it is that this unlikely duo sets out for the southernmost end of the trail, deep in Georgia, and begins hiking. Their adventures, or more specifically those they encounter over the course of their adventures, make for fantastic reading. From nutty hikers to those who pick up hitchhikers to innkeepers and cab drivers, Bryson brings color - and humor - to each day's long, hard slog.
In addition to chronicling his very long walk in the woods, Bryson offers a great deal of history on the Appalachian Trail, the National Parks Service and Forest Service pretty generally, and even the dreaded zoonotic diseases one might encounter within the parks. For a moment I forgot I was reading Bryson and thought I was reading Quammen.
Four stars.
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