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A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail (Official Guides to the Appalachian Trail) Kindle Edition

by Bill Bryson (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.4 23,433 ratings

in East South Central U.S. Regional Travel

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The classic chronicle of a “terribly misguided and terribly funny” (The Washington Post) hike of the Appalachian Trail, from the author of A Short History of Nearly Everything and The Body

“The best way of escaping into nature.”—The New York Times

Back in America after twenty years in Britain, Bill Bryson decided to reacquaint himself with his native country by walking the 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail, which stretches from Georgia to Maine. The AT 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 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 along for the walk. But A Walk in the Woods is more than just a laugh-out-loud hike. Bryson’s acute eye is a wise witness to this beautiful but fragile trail, and as he tells its fascinating history, he makes a moving plea for the conservation of America’s last great wilderness. An adventure, a comedy, and a celebration, A Walk in the Woods is a modern classic of travel literature.

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September 8, 2010
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Popular Highlights in this book

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Life takes on a neat simplicity, too. Time ceases to have any meaning. When it is dark, you go to bed, and when it is light again you get up, and everything in between is just in between. It’s quite wonderful, really.
Highlighted by 2,253 Kindle readers
If there is one thing the AT teaches, it is low-level ecstasy—something we could all do with more of in our lives.
Highlighted by 1,992 Kindle readers
Altogether, it takes about five months, and five million steps, to walk the trail from end to end.
Highlighted by 1,300 Kindle readers

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Bill Bryson has made a living out of traveling and then writing about it. In The Lost Continent he re-created the road trips of his childhood; in Neither Here nor There he retraced the route he followed as a young backpacker traversing Europe. When this American transplant to Britain decided to return home, he made a farewell walking tour of the British countryside and produced Notes from a Small Island. Once back on American soil and safely settled in New Hampshire, Bryson once again hears the siren call of the open road--only this time it's a trail. The Appalachian Trail, to be exact. In A Walk in the Woods Bill Bryson tackles what is, for him, an entirely new subject: the American wilderness. Accompanied only by his old college buddy Stephen Katz, Bryson starts out one March morning in north Georgia, intending to walk the entire 2,100 miles to trail's end atop Maine's Mount Katahdin.

If nothing else, A Walk in the Woods is proof positive that the journey is the destination. As Bryson and Katz haul their out-of-shape, middle-aged butts over hill and dale, the reader is treated to both a very funny personal memoir and a delightful chronicle of the trail, the people who created it, and the places it passes through. Whether you plan to make a trip like this one yourself one day or only care to read about it, A Walk in the Woods is a great way to spend an afternoon. --Alix Wilber

From Publishers Weekly

Returning to the U.S. after 20 years in England, Iowa native Bryson decided to reconnect with his mother country by hiking the length of the 2100-mile Appalachian Trail. Awed by merely the camping section of his local sporting goods store, he nevertheless plunges into the wilderness and emerges with a consistently comical account of a neophyte woodsman learning hard lessons about self-reliance. Bryson (The Lost Continent) carries himself in an irresistibly bewildered manner, accepting each new calamity with wonder and hilarity. He reviews the characters of the AT (as the trail is called), from a pack of incompetent Boy Scouts to a perpetually lost geezer named Chicken John. Most amusing is his cranky, crude and inestimable companion, Katz, a reformed substance abuser who once had single-handedly "become, in effect, Iowa's drug culture." The uneasy but always entertaining relationship between Bryson and Katz keeps their walk interesting, even during the flat stretches. Bryson completes the trail as planned, and he records the misadventure with insight and elegance. He is a popular author in Britain and his impeccably graceful and witty style deserves a large American audience as well.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

YA-Leisurely walks in the Cotswolds during a 20-year sojourn in England hardly prepared Bryson for the rigors of the Appalachian Trail. Nevertheless, he and his friend Katz, both 40-something couch potatoes, set out on a cold March morning to walk the 2000-mile trail from Georgia to Maine. Overweight and out of shape, Katz jettisoned many of his provisions on the first day out. The men were adopted by Mary Ellen, a know-it-all hiker eager to share her opinions about everything. They finally eluded her, encountered some congenial hikers, and after eight days of stumbling up and down mountains in the rain and mud, came to Gatlinburg, TN. Acknowledging they would never make it the whole way, they decided to skip the rest of the Smokies and head for the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia-by car. Late that summer, for their last hike, the pair attempted to hike the Hundred Mile Wilderness in Maine, near the trail's end. They got separated and Bryson spent a day and night searching for his friend. When they finally were reunited, "...we decided to leave the endless trail and stop pretending we were mountain men because we weren't." This often hilarious account of the foibles of two inept adventurers is sprinkled with fascinating details of the history of the AT, its wildlife, and tales of famous and not-so-famous hikers. In his more serious moments, Bryson argues for the protection of this fragile strip of wilderness. YAs who enjoy the outdoors, and especially those familiar with the AT, will find this travelogue both entertaining and insightful.
Molly Connally, Kings Park Library, Fairfax County, VA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This funny book has been well represented on radio and television talk shows, with Bryson presenting humorous and often poignant observations about his overweight, ex-alcoholic hiking partner Stephen Katz and their experiences along the Appalachian Trail (AT). Bryson had moved to England and gained most of his hiking experience along that country's friendly trails from village to village and pub to pub. An experienced travel writer (The Lost Continent, Audio Reviews, LJ 9/1/93), he decided to tackle the 2200-mile trail from Georgia to Maine?and then discovered that wilderness hiking and British hiking are two very different things. Ultimately, Bryson and Katz struggle along a part of the southern trail and then abandon the whole idea. Bryson drives down and samples parts of the remaining AT, such as the Pennsylvania coal country, and finally he and Katz decide to give it another chance and set out into the 100-mile wilderness of Maine?and quickly drop out again. The book's value lies in its humor and its trenchant observations on the environmental damage along selected portions of the trail and on the history both of the trail itself and the areas of the eastern mountains through which it winds. The author is often hilarious, his companion Katz is an entirely sympathetic character, and one learns a lot about those subjects Bryson touches upon. Fortunately, William Roberts is an excellent reader; his voice is alternately sardonic and matter-of-fact, just like Bryson writes. This will be popular in public library collections especially.?Don Wismer, Cary Memorial Lib., Wayne, ME
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

After living abroad, Bryson decides to reacquaint himself with America by walking the famed Appalachian Trail, which traverses 14 states and stretches 2,100 miles. He recruits his ne'er-do-well chum Stephen Katz, his traveling companion in Neither Here nor There (1991). They hadn't gotten along on that European trip, and this time Katz shows up extremely overweight, toting 75 pounds of Snickers bars. He is hardly a good choice for a hiking partner, but Bryson is happy just to have someone along to share the often difficult experience (and Katz does prove to be a very funny man). They set out from Amicalola Falls State (GA) Park carrying the official Appalachian Trail guides consisting of 11 books and 59 maps, which proved "monumentally useless." Although they fail to walk the entire trail (indeed, Katz falls behind almost immediately), Bryson's book is a marvelous description and history of the trail and the mountains, providing an informal record of the trail's founding and many of its hikers. Bryson's great good humor makes this a journey worth taking. Ron Antonucci

From Kirkus Reviews

The Appalachian Trailfrom Springer Mountain, Ga., to Mount Katahdin, Me.consists of some five million steps, and Bryson (Notes from a Small Island, 1996, etc.) seems to coax a laugh, and often an unexpectedly startling insight, out of each one he traverses. It's not all yuksthough it is hard not to grin idiotically through all 288 pagesfor Bryson is a talented portraitist of place. He did his natural-history homework, which is to say he knows a jack-o-lantern mushroom from a hellbender salamander from a purple wartyback mussel, and can also write seriously about the devastation of chestnut blight. He laces his narrative with gobbets of trail history and local trivia, and he makes real the ``strange and palpable menace'' of the dark deep woods in which he sojourns, the rough-hewn trailscape ``mostly high up on the hills, over lonely ridges and forgotten hollows that no one has ever used or coveted,'' celebrating as well the ``low-level ecstasy'' of finding a book left thoughtfully at a trail shelter, or a broom with which to sweep out the shelter's dross. Yet humor is where the book finds its cues--from Bryson's frequent trail companion, the obese and slothful Katz, a spacious target for Bryson's sly wit, to moments of cruel and infantile laughs, as when he picks mercilessly on the witless woman who, admittedly, ruined a couple of their days. But for the most part the humor is bright sarcasm, flashing with drollery and intelligence, even when its a far yodel from political sensitivity. Then Bryson will take your breath away with a trenchant critique of the irredeemably vulgar vernacular strip that characterizes many American downtowns, or of other signs of decay he encounters off the trail (though the trail itself he comes to love). ``Walking is what we did,'' Bryson states: 800-plus out of the 2,100-plus miles, and that good sliver is sheer comic travel entertainment. ($150,000 ad/promo; author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review

"Choke-on-your-coffee funny."
--The Washington Post Book World

"Bryson is . . . great company right from the start--a lumbering, droll, neatnik intellectual who comes off as equal parts Garrison Keillor, Michael Kinsley, and . . . Dave Barry."
--The New York Times Book Review

"A Walk in the Woods is an almost perfect travel book."
--The Boston Globe

From the Trade Paperback edition.

About the Author

Bill Bryson was born in Des Moines, Iowa. He settled in England in 1977 and lived for many years with his wife and four children in North Yorkshire. He recently returned to the US and now lives in New Hampshire. Bryson's first bestseller was The Lost Continent, a journey through the USA by car. Notes from a Small Island was a #1 bestseller in Canada and spent 43 weeks on the trade paperback list in the UK.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

We hiked till five and camped beside a tranquil spring in a small, grassy clearing in the trees just off the trail. Because it was our first day back on the trail, we were flush for food, including perishables like cheese and bread that had to be eaten before they went off or were shaken to bits in our packs, so we rather gorged ourselves, then sat around smoking and chatting idly until persistent and numerous midgelike creatures (no-see-ums, as they are universally known along the trail) drove us into our tents. It was perfect sleeping weather, cool enough to need a bag but warm enough that you could sleep in your underwear, and I was looking forward to a long night's snooze—indeed was enjoying a long night's snooze—when, at some indeterminate dark hour, there was a sound nearby that made my eyes fly open. Normally, I slept through everything—through thunderstorms, through Katz's snoring and noisy midnight pees—so something big enough or distinctive enough to wake me was unusual. There was a sound of undergrowth being disturbed—a click of breaking branches, a weighty pushing through low foliage—and then a kind of large, vaguely irritable snuffling noise.

Bear!

I sat bolt upright. Instantly every neuron in my brain was awake and dashing around frantically, like ants when you disturb their nest. I reached instinctively for my knife, then realized I had left it in my pack, just outside the tent. Nocturnal defense had ceased to be a concern after many successive nights of tranquil woodland repose. There was another noise, quite near.

"Stephen, you awake?" I whispered.

"Yup," he replied in a weary but normal voice.

"What was that?"

"How the hell should I know."

"It sounded big."

"Everything sounds big in the woods."

This was true. Once a skunk had come plodding through our camp and it had sounded like a stegosaurus. There was another heavy rustle and then the sound of lapping at the spring. It was having a drink, whatever it was.

I shuffled on my knees to the foot of the tent, cautiously unzipped the mesh and peered out, but it was pitch black. As quietly as I could, I brought in my backpack and with the light of a small flashlight searched through it for my knife. When I found it and opened the blade I was appalled at how wimpy it looked. It was a perfectly respectable appliance for, say, buttering pancakes, but patently inadequate for defending oneself against 400 pounds of ravenous fur.

Carefully, very carefully, I climbed from the tent and put on the flashlight, which cast a distressingly feeble beam. Something about fifteen or twenty feet away looked up at me. I couldn't see anything at all of its shape or size—only two shining eyes. It went silent, whatever it was, and stared back at me.

"Stephen," I whispered at his tent, "did you pack a knife?"

"No."

"Have you get anything sharp at all?"

He thought for a moment. "Nail clippers."

I made a despairing face. "Anything a little more vicious than that? Because, you see, there is definitely something out here."

"It's probably just a skunk."

"Then it's one big skunk. Its eyes are three feet off the ground."

"A deer then."

I nervously threw a stick at the animal, and it didn't move, whatever it was. A deer would have bolted. This thing just blinked once and kept staring.

I reported this to Katz.

"Probably a buck. They're not so timid. Try shouting at it."

I cautiously shouted at it: "Hey! You there! Scat!" The creature blinked again, singularly unmoved. "You shout," I said.

"Oh, you brute, go away, do!" Katz shouted in merciless imitation. "Please withdraw at once, you horrid creature."

"Fuck you," I said and lugged my tent right over to his. I didn't know what this would achieve exactly, but it brought me a tiny measure of comfort to be nearer to him.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm moving my tent."

"Oh, good plan. That'll really confuse it."

I peered and peered, but I couldn't see anything but those two wide-set eyes staring from the near distance like eyes in a cartoon. I couldn't decide whether I wanted to be outside and dead or inside and waiting to be dead. I was barefoot and in my underwear and shivering. What I really wanted—really, really wanted—was for the animal to withdraw. I picked up a small stone and tossed it at it. I think it may have hit it because the animal made a sudden noisy start (which scared the bejesus out of me and brought a whimper to my lips) and then emitted a noise—not quite a growl, but near enough. It occurred to me that perhaps I oughtn't provoke it.

"What are you doing, Bryson? Just leave it alone and it will go away."

"How can you be so calm?"

"What do you want me to do? You're hysterical enough for both of us."

"I think I have a right to be a trifle alarmed, pardon me. I'm in the woods, in the middle of nowhere, in the dark, staring at a bear, with a guy who has nothing to defend himself with but a pair of nail clippers. Let me ask you this. If it is a bear and it comes for you, what are you going to do—give it a pedicure?"

"I'll cross that bridge when I come to it," Katz said implacably.

"What do you mean you'll cross that bridge? We're on the bridge, you moron. There's a bear out here, for Christ sake. He's looking at us. He smells noodles and Snickers and—oh, shit."

"What?"

"Oh. Shit."

"What?"

"There's two of them. I can see another pair of eyes." Just then, the flashlight battery started to go. The light flickered and then vanished. I scampered into my tent, stabbing myself lightly but hysterically in the thigh as I went, and began a quietly frantic search for spare batteries. If I were a bear, this would be the moment I would choose to lunge.

"Well, I'm going to sleep," Katz announced.

"What are you talking about? You can't go to sleep."

"Sure I can. I've done it lots of times." There was the sound of him rolling over and a series of snuffling noises, not unlike those of the creature outside.

"Stephen, you can't go to sleep," I ordered. But he could and he did, with amazing rapidity.

The creature—creatures, now—resumed drinking, with heavy lapping noises. I couldn't find any replacement batteries, so I flung the flashlight aside and put my miner's lamp on my head, made sure it worked, then switched it off to conserve the batteries. Then I sat for ages on my knees, facing the front of the tent, listening keenly, gripping my walking stick like a club, ready to beat back an attack, with my knife open and at hand as a last line of defense. The bears—animals, whatever they were—drank for perhaps twenty minutes more, then quietly departed the way they had come. It was a joyous moment, but I knew from my reading that they would be likely to return. I listened and listened, but the forest returned to silence and stayed there.

Eventually I loosened my grip on the walking stick and put on a sweater—pausing twice to examine the tiniest noises, dreading the sound of a revisit—and after a very long time got back into my sleeping bag for warmth. I lay there for a long time staring at total blackness and knew that never again would I sleep in the woods with a light heart.

And then, irresistibly and by degrees, I fell asleep.

From AudioFile

Here is a perfectly enjoyable book, mixing the author's wry reportorial style with William Roberts's expert reading. Roberts has a clear, easy, deep voice, which he uses to convey Bryson's words with confidence and clarity. He understands the author's meanings, alternating between being funny and starkly informative. Bryson helps by writing a book that is part hilarious misadventure and part serious message on the state of the Appalachian Trail. In essence, Bryson decides it would be fun to hike the entire trail with a buddy and, as with most romantic notions, walks headfirst into hell. His descriptions of hell are accompanied by history and botany lessons along the way. Roberts is with Bryson's every step, cracking the author's jokes and conveying the fear, apprehension and drop-dead tiredness of the serious hiker. R.I.G. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B000S1LSAM
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Crown; Reprint edition (September 8, 2010)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 8, 2010
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 4291 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 305 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #30,483 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #1 in East South Central U.S. Regional Travel
- #2 in East South Central US Travel Books
- #9 in Travel Writing

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Bill Bryson

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Bill Bryson was born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1951. Settled in England for many years, he moved to America with his wife and four children for a few years ,but has since returned to live in the UK. His bestselling travel books include The Lost Continent, Notes From a Small Island, A Walk in the Woods and Down Under. His acclaimed work of popular science, A Short History of Nearly Everything, won the Aventis Prize and the Descartes Prize, and was the biggest selling non-fiction book of the decade in the UK.

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John Sykes

A masterpiece worthy of exulting the venerable Appalachian Trail

Reviewed in the United States on April 3, 2019

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I am an avid reader. Yes, folks, I'm that annoying person who reads while standing in line, and even at red lights. I once finished an entire novel sitting in a doctor's waiting room-- but perhaps that says more about the doctor than it does about my reading abilities. haha. I also hold advanced degrees in both English and writing. I know good writing when I read it, and I have also stumbled wearily through books shoved at me from the hands of well meaning friends: "we know you love to read. Read this one and let me know what you think of it." Gah. Please don't be that person to your friends-- the frightful book foister. Please, I beg of you. Don't be that person. Don't make me flee from your presence like unfiled taxes fleeing from the IRS, to avoid said horrible book dumping.

Tiresome celebrity biographies, reminiscent of a painful 9th grade essay, sold merely because a famous name is on it . . . let's admit it-- what can they really "tell all" about, when their lives are already a literal (equally wearying) open book?
Romance novels, with a close up of a muscular hand clutching a lacy red bustier on the front, which after several dreary pages makes me feel like ripping it, literally, in half, and throwing the book away. Cookbooks-- there are a few decent ones in this "here read this!" genre, but many of them are thrown together to make a sale, and let's face it-- when is the last time you actually made a recipe from an actual cookbook? Exactly. You throw it in the bag for the beach, thumb through a few pages while smearing on sunscreen, and then toss it in the 'ole bookshelf when you get home, where it is destined to live for the rest of readless, purgatorial eternity.

A friend recommended "A Walk in the Woods." Sigh, I thought. Another recommendation. I admire the "woods" from a distance, but I fear insects, snakes, vermin, rodents, and even the casual snap of a twig within their clutches. I do not camp. I do not eat camp food. I prefer to have my meals without a side of food poisoning. So you'd be right in thinking that my reaction was something like, "Ugh another referral. I will have less in common with this book than a Protestant would have with the Pope." I started it grudgingly, expecting to do the obligatory dragging of my eyes across the page until it was finally, relievingly, replete.

Boy was I in for a surprise.

Within the first few pages I surprised myself by chuckling. Then laughing. Then outright, from the gut, throwing back my head and howling. I stayed up until almost 1 AM that first night, devouring chapter after chapter, even though I had to be up early for work the next day. I just couldn't put it down. The writing is refreshingly honest-- at once thoughtful, hilarious, sarcastic, and downright well done. This is not the scribbling of a celebrity trying to sell books. This is the tale of someone who has truly lived a once in a lifetime kind of all-American experience. His observations about the conditions of the trails, the miraculous preservation efforts made by volunteers on the trail for decades, and even his views on life, are inspirational. His descriptions of the kooky characters, the beautiful, sweeping vistas of untouched wilderness that he discovered as he rounded thousands of wearying bends in the never-ending trails . . . it's magic. Pure magic. I can almost close my eyes and see it, so vivid are his descriptions of the meadows, the wildflowers, the soft sighing of the trees in the quiet breeze.

I've always said that the best kind of writing contains three elements. First, it is relevant/relate-able to all. It takes an incredible author to take a subject about which I have little interest (camping), and make it relevant and interesting to me, yet he does. Second, it should have humor-- not the "polite chuckle" kind of humor, but a real, genuine, gut laughing kind of humor, hidden delightfully throughout the text, waiting to surprise you like golden treasure where you would least think to look. Third, it should have moments of piercing, beautiful clarity-- moments when you find yourself, for reasons you almost can't explain, blinking back the tears as some particularly poignant thought resonates through your very being.

Bill Bryson delivers richly on all three counts. This book ended with my feeling deliciously and completely satiated, in every way. I laughed until my sides were sore, I cried at the honest, beautiful tendrils of his story as it wrapped its beautifully written arms around my heart. I shook my head solemnly with a deep, "Mmmm, yes" at the inspirations recorded within the story as he discovered, not just the beauty of the Appalachian Trail, but the beauty of life, warmth, family, and companionship. Perhaps the beauty of America is that a little bit of the magic resides in the heart of all of us. That's the message here. And it's a darned inspirational one.

I haven't done this often, but a few times in my life a book is so wonderful-- so stupendous-- that I just can't bear to end it. So the moment I finish, I move my bookmark back to chapter 1. Not ending-- just starting again.

My bookmark is resting in chapter 1 of this one.

225 people found this helpful

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Kindle Customer

enjoyable memoir with humor

Reviewed in the United States on March 5, 2024

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I’m somewhat fascinated by people that hike . As a non hiker I enjoy reading about stories of hikers I really like Cheryl Strayed’s Wild and enjoyed Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods if in just because I know I will not be hiking the AP anytime soon and want to know the draw that it has

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PK

A great travelog for the unfit

Reviewed in the United States on March 17, 2024

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Delightful hiking story of a walk in the woods as only Bryson can tell it. With consistent humanity, humor that caused me to wake my spouse on more than one occasion due to unrestrainable laughter. Well worth the time spent!

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Amazon Customer

One of the funniest books I ever read. You laugh out loud!

Reviewed in the United States on March 10, 2024

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Bill Bryson wrote this NY Times Best Seller and it is hilarious. It also contains history and information about the Appalachian trail. I highly recommend this book for a great read.

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Rose Richards

A walk in bad company

Reviewed in the United States on August 16, 2015

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Bill Bryson is probably best known for his travel memoirs, but before "A Walk in the Woods," the only one of his books I'd read was "The Mother Tongue," a delightfully rambling exploration of the English language. I've since read reviews in which people who seem to know what they're talking about claim that "The Mother Tongue" is more entertaining than it is accurate, but of course, language is an eternally complex and controversial subject. I enjoyed Bryson's wit and style, and I figured he probably couldn't go wrong narrating an adventure of his own rather than trying to convey to the reader the complexity of Finnish verb conjugations. After the juicy trainwreck that was Cheryl Strayed's "Wild," I was in the mood for a hiking memoir without the melodrama and psychobabble, something down-to-earth and smart and at least as much about the actual trail as about the author's metaphorical "journey." The deliciously understated title of Bryson's account of his 1996 attempt to tackle the Appalachian Trail promised exactly what I was looking for.

Oh, "A Walk in the Woods" could have been good. It could have been SO GOOD. For the most part, it actually was. The first couple of chapters had me almost shivering with delight at Bryson's curmudgeonly humor and self-deprecating wit, and once, I even laughed out loud. Bryson is the kind of unpretentious, straightforwardly spot-on prose stylist that makes good writing look terrifically easy. Throughout the book, he balances action and description, narrative momentum and entertaining diversions, with a masterful hand. Whatever subject Bryson takes up, be it continental drift or bear attacks or early American amateur botanists or a Pennsylvania coal fire that's burned for over thirty years (over fifty, as of the writing of this review) or the history of the trail itself, becomes instantly and effortlessly fascinating.

What almost ruined "A Walk in the Woods" for me, however, was almost every scene in which Bill Bryson interacts with other human beings. The traveling companion with whom Bryson shares most of his walk, Stephen Katz (a somewhat fictionalized version of his friend Matthew Angerer), is portrayed unflatteringly but ultimately with affection, and the book is dedicated to him. (Angerer has admitted in interviews that he's not thrilled about how Bryson portrays him, but it's a pretty accurate portrayal aside from a few fabricated or exaggerated incidents.) Almost everyone else Bryson meets on the trail, however, becomes an object of mockery. The gentle good humor of the first few chapters quickly turns nasty. It was funny when Bryson listed "loony hillbillies destabilized by gross quantities of impure corn liquor and generations of profoundly unbiblical sex" along with "rattlesnakes and water moccasins and nests of copperheads; bobcats, bears, coyotes, wolves, and wild boar; . . . rabies-crazed skunks, raccoons, and squirrels; merciless fire ants and ravening blackfly; poison ivy, poison sumac, poison oak, and poison salamanders; even a scattering of moose lethally deranged by a parasitic worm" in a catalogue of the trail's potential perils, but it stopped being funny when I realized he actually meant it: Bryson honestly expects the Appalachian woods to be full of violent, inbred stereotypes incarnate.

Look, I'm a bit of a curmudgeon myself. I *love* laughing at human stupidity. Nobody laughs louder than I do when Bill Engvall does his "Here's Your Sign" routine. However, Bryson's need to sneer at the intellectual poverty of nearly everyone he meets says more about him than it does about any of them. Towards the end of the book, he asks a fellow hiker he meets at a guesthouse a question he has to admit is "a trifle" inane, the sort of thing he's spent 250 pages mocking other people for saying, and then he has the gall to describe the manner of her answer as "serenely mindless." (When she and her traveling companion pray over their meal and credit God with helping them keep a positive attitude despite the rigors of the trail, Bryson "made a mental note to lock my door when I went to bed.") The first time Bryson decides to skip a portion of the trail, it's because the citizens of Tennessee are too stupid for his liking. (Even if Tennesseans were as cretinous as Bryson makes them out to be, it's unclear why that should matter when he's spending most of his time in the state *alone in the woods*.) If there's anything Bryson dislikes even more than stupid people, it's fat people. He himself admits at the beginning of the book to being somewhat less than svelte after "years of waddlesome sloth," and at the end that his exertions on the trail left him "slender and fit" for "a brief, proud period," which is implied to be long over. Other fat people, however, including his friend Katz, are just plain ridiculous and disgusting. Bryson professes admiration for a 350-pound man who thru-hiked the trail (which Bryson himself never even seriously attempted), but clearly doesn't admire him enough to refrain from calling him a "human beachball," or dismissing the 53 pounds the man lost as "a trifle, all things considered." Fat women, or any other female who doesn't meet Bryson's standard of attractiveness, who dare to express sexual interest in a man are simply beneath contempt. In perhaps the single meanest anecdote in a book liberally peppered with meanness, Bryson introduces us to "a charmless, gum-popping waitress who declined to be heartened by our wholesome smiles . . . let's call her Betty Slutz." Actually, there's no need to call her anything, since she's never mentioned again after this page - and the misogyny of the insult is purely gratuitous, since her behavior as Bryson describes it is surly, not sexually provocative.

Bryson's apparent delight in fault-finding carries over to the trail itself, although with less petty meanness. Anyone who heads out into the wilderness with a backpack has earned the right to grumble-brag a bit about aches and privations, but Bryson doesn't actually seem to enjoy the hike or really understand why he's doing it, except that he got the notion into his head and can't back out now (why do I get the feeling the fancy camping gear he buys was paid for with a publisher's advance?). He wishes the trail were a bit less wild, less wooded, more in contact with at least the fringes of civilization, even though he's profoundly unimpressed with nearly all of the towns it does pass through. (Most hikers, after several days or weeks in the woods, are nearly ecstatic for a chance to take a shower, eat a hot meal or two, sleep for a night in a proper bed, and listen awhile to the hum of human conversation before heading back out on the trail, but not Bryson: he wants cul-chah and refinement, or something.) He raises some valid criticisms of the National Park Service, but doesn't give them any credit for the things they actually have accomplished. Perhaps most damning, Bryson rails against acid rain and accidentally-imported tree diseases, but he treats Katz's littering, which he actually had the power to do something about, as a big joke.

Perhaps I'm doing a bit of a Bryson myself here, pointing out all the flaws of something I basically enjoyed. If I can't recommend "A Walk in the Woods" wholeheartedly, well, neither do I mean to say you *shouldn't* read it. Most of this book is a pleasure to read, both entertaining and informative, and often very funny. If you're considering a thru-hike (or even a substantial section-hike) of the Appalachian Trail, you'll want to read some accounts by those who have actually hiked the whole way, or made a serious attempt to do so. (Bryson hikes only about two-fifths of the trail; that's no mean accomplishment, especially since more than half that distance he was backpacking hardcore in Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia, but he skipped or day-hiked nearly everything above the Mason-Dixon line - ironic, considering his utter disdain for the South.) For the armchair traveler, however, it's excellent fun and a journey well worth taking. I wish only that Bill Bryson had been better company along the way.

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KB

An enjoyable read

Reviewed in the United States on January 4, 2024

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Decided to read this after watching the movie. It was an enjoyable and entertaining read with several chuckle worthy portions. The book does mention a few noteworthy points about the Appalachian Mts. and the AT but I would be negligent if I didn’t mention that some of the authors personal criticism about the USFS and general forestry practices are incorrect. As environmental professional, the truth is much more complex and hard to quantify. Still, get the book and enjoy.

Reviewed in the United States on March 13, 2024

A gift

Fabulous read!!!! Fun and funny to read!!

Reviewed in the United States on February 20, 2024

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Easy and delightful read. I felt like I was there dragging along the AT with the "boys." Would recommend to anyone who wants a relaxing read!!!

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Chris Pitre

Excellent book

Reviewed in Canada on December 6, 2023

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Great writer. Great adventure. Lots of laughs. Strongly recommend!

neil ferrans

A challenge taken up

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 5, 2024

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I enjoyed the lightheartedness with which the author shared his sentiments and physical challenges with the readers.
His encounters with other hikers as well as his relationship with his companion are entertaining and clever analysis of others strengths and weaknesses, often raising a smile as one recalls similar characters in ones own life of adventures.
A good read about the famous Appalachian Trail, to non Americans it has the fame of a pilgrimage.

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Sarah Gemünden

Großartiges Buch

Reviewed in Germany on August 15, 2023

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Tolles Buch - auf Englisch nicht ganz einfach zu verstehen aber trotzdem machbar

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Cliente Amazon

ok

Reviewed in Italy on August 9, 2023

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tutto bene

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Anu

Exhilarating read

Reviewed in India on May 17, 2021

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Loved every bit of this book. Bryson skill-fully mingles personal experience with a dose of humor and the history of the trail and American wilderness in the American east in general.

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A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail (Official Guides to the Appalachian Trail) Kindle Edition

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