Books - Book Review - A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

Maggie, the owner of McKeown’s Books and Difficult Music, gave me a copy of this book for my vacation.

It’s a great work! Bill decides to hike the Appalachian Trail (AT for short), which runs from Georgia to Maine. He contacts a friend, whom he hasn’t spoken to in 25 years, and off they go.

Neither is in good shape, but they manage to do a decent job. The stories of the technology of hiking and some of the people they come across are very funny. Not all of the trip was fun, though; there were a few scary episodes when the weather changed drastically, and the terrain was not what they expected.

Mr. Bryson states that “… the United States has lots of forests compared to other developed countries..” Another amazing Chapter 16 fact, is that “In 1850, New England was 70% open farmland and 30% woods. Today the proportions are exactly the opposite

Perhaps no area in the developed world has undergone a more profound change in just a century or so, at least not in a contrary direction to the normal course of progress.”

And in Chapter 9, he beautifully writes, “.... When you’re on the AT, the forest is your universe, infinite and entire. It is all you experience day after day. Eventually, it is about all you can imagine.”

Whenever I visited bookstores in the UK that sold new books, his books were EVERYWHERE. He is much beloved other there. I think what I wrote last summer about not being a prophet in your own land is very true in this case.

This book is a great read on two levels. If you are considering hiking the AT, you can get some realistic descriptions of what to expect. It is also a great story about renewing relationships and getting out of touch with the hectic life that we led in the Western world.