Gold Mine Processing Associate Peter Matschek recommends A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson.
In short, this book is about the Appalachian Trail. As a backpacker in my youth, I was interested in the long hiking trails in the country such as the Pacific Crest Trail and the Appalachian Trail, but I didn’t know much about the AT (as it is known by). The author had lived the previous 20 years in England and when he returned to New England, he decided to hike the trail.
He didn’t let his lack of experience get in the way of doing this trip.
He started out by researching the history and discovering that it might not the cakewalk he had envisioned. “Nearly everyone I talked to had some gruesome story involving an acquaintance who came stumbling back two days later with a bobcat attached to his head or dripping blood from an armless sleeve and whispering in a hoarse voice Bear! Bryson goes on to list a variety of wildlife that inhabits the woods:
“… rattlesnakes and water moccasins and nests of copperheads, bobcats, bears coyotes, wolves … looney hillbillies destabilized by gross quantities of impure corn liquor and generations of profoundly unbiblical sex.”
Bryson lists the diseases one can develop while in the woods with Lyme disease being “for the person who wants to experience it all.” He also mentions the killings that have occurred on the trail and people who come up missing without a trace.
You would think that all this information would discourage him from actually hiking the AT, but no, he was bound and determined. He asked a friend to join him who was even more clueless about what they were getting into (not to mention “gloriously out of shape”). They wound up hiking over 800 miles of the trail in different sections and met “a bizarre assortment of hilarious characters.”
Bryson also describes the history of the AT and all the areas that the trail traverses. It’s a very entertaining and informative book and I recommend it to anybody who is interested in the Appalachian Trail.
Find it in our collection in print, large print, ebook, CD, and DVD here.
