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"Not long after I moved with my family to a small town in New Hampshire, I happened upon a path that vanished into a wood on the edge of town."
So begins Bill Bryson's hilarious book A Walk in the Woods. Following his go back to America after twenty years in Britain, Bryson decided to reacquaint himself along with his native country by walking the two 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail, which stretches from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine. The AT, as it's affectionately recognized to thousands of hikers, offers an astonishing landscape of silent forests and sparkling lakes--and to a writer with the comic genius of Bill Bryson, it also provides endless opportunities to test his own powers of ineptitude, also to witness the majestic silliness of his fellow human beings.
For a start, there's the gloriously out-of-shape Stephen Katz, a buddy from Iowa who accompanies the similarly unfit Bryson on the trail. Once Bryson and Katz settle to their stride, it's not long before they come across the fabulously annoying Mary Ellen, whose disappearance ruins a correctly good slice of pie, a gang of Ralph Lauren-attired yuppies from whom Katz appropriates a key device, and a security guard in Pennsylvania who, for no ascertainable reason, impounds Bryson's car. Mile by arduous mile these latter-day pioneers walk America, on the way surviving the threat of bear attacks, the increased loss of key provisions, and everything else this awe-inspiring country can throw at them.
But A Walk in the Woods is more than only a laugh-out-loud hike. Bryson's acute eye is a wise witness to the fragile and beautiful trail, and since he tells its fascinating history, he makes a moving plea for the conservation of America's last great wilderness. An adventure, a comedy, a lament, and a celebration, A Walk in the Woods is destined to become a modern classic of travel literature.
