A Walk In The Woods. Bill Bryson. 1997. 581 Pages. (As ebook on Overdrive.) (12 Hours, 46 minutes).

Perhaps best known for his light and often silly humour this New Hampshire author includes an abundance of that but includes a serious, detailed history of icons of American history like Stonewall Jackson, and Harper’s Ferry, as he hikes parts of the Appalachian trail with a quirky friend. Included is the sad history of coal mining and oil drilling in Pensilvania and the sarcastically described destruction of forests by the United States Forestry Service, in the pocket of lumber companies, and of biodiversity by self-serving developers. The Army Corps of Engineers is scorned for their keenness to build poorly designed dams on pristine rivers.

Centralia in Ohio was a smouldering fire for 30 years due to an underground coal mining explosion and a desolate landscape in a nearby town is described vividly. There is a plethora of U.S. history and geography although Bryson denies being a geologist.

The many trials of hiking the full 2,200 miles of the Appalachian Trail eventually proved too much for the pair, but their reflections of harrowing narrow passes, getting lost in a snowstorm and wildlife encounters gives the book an adventure quality and keeps the reader engaged.

My only experience with anything remotely similar was in 2017, when my daughter took me to Tierra del Fuego for a one day hike. The bus took us considerably further than planned and we then hiked for what seemed like an eternity back to where we were to meet the bus, over rocks, ice, tree roots, and hills in freezing rain and snow. We missed the bus by hours and I was in agony with my patellofemoral syndrome.

4.0/5