Ours is the age of the hiking influencer. Once, the train and stagecoach ferried recreationists to nearby wilderness preserves and rural areas, typically for long stretches of solitude and relaxation afforded only by the upper crust. The car ushered in the weekender age, where any go-getting family could drive hundreds of miles to the most beloved spots for a weekend or even a single day of hiking, kayaking, or sunbathing. In today’s world, the cell phone has allowed instantaneous interaction with the outdoors. A glut of Instagram-focused visitors have left writers, rangers and local governments puzzled on how to respond. In a moment, one can follow any number of attractive 20-to-30 somethings as they seemingly constantly exist in exotic and beautiful locales. Any vista, no matter how remote, can be found through a search bar. The outdoors are as prim and posed as the photographers are, beautiful, accessible, and yet distant.
Enter Bill Bryson and A Walk in the Woods.
Bryson, a travel and science writer, wrote A Walk in the Woods in 1998. In it, he describes his attempt at hiking the Appalachian Trail, a contiguous hiking trail that runs from Georgia to Maine. Bryson plans his trip as his spiritual reconnection with the United States after living in the U.K. for a number of years. Fearful of going alone, he recruits an old friend, Stephen Katz.
Bryson is not a romantic, and the two’s journey is almost immediately comic. Katz arrives at the airport to meet Bryson many pounds overweight and near-entirely unprepared. Before even the start of their journey, they dispose of much of their packing in frustration; the day they embark on the trail, they discover that Georgia is to suffer a rare and severe late March snowstorm. The errors and mistakes only compound from there.
“The hardest part was coming to terms with the constant dispiriting discovery that there is always more hill.” A Walk in the Woods
Where Bryson thrives is in describing the pleasures and pains of isolation. He dispenses with the manic destructive awe of Abbey’s writings in Desert Solitaire -
“If my decomposing carcass helps nourish the roots of a juniper tree or the wings of a
vulture—that is immortality enough for me. And as much as anyone deserves.” -
And with the sad contemplative respect of Leopold in A Sand County Almanac -
“All conservation of wildness is self-defeating, for to cherish we must see and fondle,
and when enough have seen and fondled, there is no wilderness left to cherish.”
Instead, Bryson is often frustrated or even cowed by the woods he walks, writing: “Woods are not like other spaces. To begin with, they are cubic. Their trees surround you, loom over you, press in from all sides. Woods choke off views & leave you muddled & without bearings. They make you feel small & confused & vulnerable, like a small child lost in a crowd of strange legs...They are vast, featureless nowhere. And they are alive.”
Bryson, who was in his mid 40s during the hike, consistently and constantly complains about his back, legs and heavy bags and compares his shape to the younger, more lithe hikers he often meets. His account takes the good with the bad, and places the viewer in the moment.
That is not to say there is no love in the book. Bryson is constantly curious and peppers A Walk in the Woods with many interesting digressions and side stories on the areas he and Katz pass through; including the founding of the trail itself in its original form as a path connecting new, utopian communities, the most famous hikers of the trail, like the 67 year old ultra-lite hiker Grandma Gatewood and Earl Shaffer, the first man to complete the trail in one stretch, as well as an abandoned Pennsylvania town built on top of a burning coal seam.
"I gained a profound respect for the wilderness and nature and the benign dark power of woods. I understand now, in a way I never did before, the colossal scale of the world. I found patience and fortitude that I didn't know I had. I discovered an America that millions of people scarcely know exists. I made a friend. I came home.” A Walk in the Woods
Where many hike for the chance at solitude and introspection, the other joy of the book is found in Bryson’s connections with those he meets on the trail. These connections are not always nice. Bryson can be charitably described as almost always rude to others. There’s Mary Ellen, a constantly boasting tag-a-long who is constantly shooting mucus from her nose and immediately criticizes the entirety of Bryson’s gear, a powerfully drunk and newly engaged couple who drive Bryson and Katz from the trail into a nearby town at 90 an hour, Chicken John, the perpetually lost lone hiker who once found himself 37 miles off course, and even Katz himself.
Katz and Bryson have a confrontational relationship at first. The two are old friends who had not seen each other in decades, a recipe for missed expectations. Bryson is often frustrated with Katz’s slowness and bad attitude. Katz in turn resents the fact that he is not being appreciated for his volunteer effort on Bryson’s journey. As their hike develops, the two form a respect and appreciation for each other. Bryson manages Katz’s relapse into alcoholism; Katz nobly offers to back-track several miles to pick up a lost walking stick of Bryson’s. That mutual respect culminates in a frantic, worried search in the Hundred Mile Wilderness of northern Maine that solidifies their camaraderie.
Spoilers follow: Bryson and Katz do not finish the Appalachian Trail. They do complete a significant stretch in the south, the length of Shenandoah National Park and a small portion of Maine, but this adds up to less than half of the length of the entire trail. In the end completion not the point: the message is in the appreciation. Bryson describes this in the new way he takes walks outside his house:
“...at some point on each walk there comes a moment when I look up and notice, with a kind of first-time astonishment, the amazing complex delicacy of the woods, the casual ease with which elemental things come together …You don't have to walk miles up mountains to achieve this, don't have to plod through blizzards, slip sputtering in mud, wade chest-deep through water, hike day after day to the edge of your limits--but believe me, it helps.”
Bryson’s book has never been unpopular. Today, it has over 350,000 ratings on Goodreads; The New York Times and The New Yorker both lauded the book’s research and humor. The Appalachian Trail Conservancy has credited it with a 60% increase in thru-hike attempts. After this year of isolation and the rise of the travel Instagram, it bears another look. We can learn from Bryson to not engage with nature on other’s terms, on other’s achievements, or other’s looks.
Nature is not a series of mile markers and commemorative patches. It is a world of its own, meant to be seen and explored - or not explored - at one’s own pace, whether one is 5, 25 or 45 years old, or whether one is a pure hiker or just some out of shape person on a walk with a friend. Of course, Bryson and Katz are both middle aged white men, who disproportionately benefit from the outdoors and would not be seen as potential victims to a bad actor as lone women would. (The book features an ample digression into Appalachian Trail murders.) The spirit of their lesson is what matters. As Bryson discovers, there is just as much wonder to be found in the backyard path as there is on hundreds of miles of backcountry trail, and certainly more than can be found on a phone screen.