Product Description

From the author of "Notes from a Small Island" and "The Lost Continent" comes this humorous report on his walk along the Appalachian Trail. The Trail is the longest continuous footpath in the world, and it snakes through some of the wildest and most spectacular landscapes in America.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4356 in Books
• Published on: 1998-07-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 350 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Bill Bryson has made a living out of travelling 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 friend Stephen Katz, Bryson starts out one March morning in north Georgia, intending to walk the entire 2,100 miles to the 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 bodies 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

Review
The author of Notes From A Small Island obviously felt the need to stretch his legs after quitting England for the United States.A Walk in the Woods, recounts Bryson's hike along the longest continuous footpath in the world, the 2000-mile-long Appalachian Trail. And as you'd expect from Bryson, this is no dry documentary - the enjoyment lies as much in his hilarious turn of phrase and eye for the incongruous as in his meetings with moonshiners, rednecks, gun-totin' nutcases and wild animals. (Kirkus UK)

The Appalachian Trail - from 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 yuks - though it is hard not to grin idiotically through all 288 pages - for 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 it's 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. (Kirkus Reviews)

From the Back Cover
The longest continuous footpath in the world, the Appalachian Trail stretches along the East Coast of the United States, from Georgia to Maine, through some of the most arresting and celebrated landscapes in America.

At the age of forty-four, in the company of his friend Stephen Katz (last seen in the bestselling Neither Here nor There), Bill Bryson set off to hike through the vast tangled woods which have been frightening sensible people for three hundred years. Ahead lay almost 2,200 miles of remote mountain wilderness filled with bears, moose, bobcats, rattlesnakes, poisonous plants, disease-bearing tics, the occasional chuckling murderer and - perhaps most alarming of all - people whose favourite pastime is discussing the relative merits of the external-frame backpack.

Facing savage weather, merciless insects, unreliable maps and a fickle companion whose profoundest wish was to go to a motel and watch The X-Files, Bryson gamely struggled through the wilderness to achieve a lifetime's ambition - not to die outdoors.

Customer Reviews

Long distance humour
A Walk in The Woods was an adventure in itself for me. I have previously walked long distance trails in England and sat gobsmacked as I read how long the AT was and that Bryson was going to walk it without any real training. But I'm so pleased that he did.
He takes his mate along with him, who at first you wish Bryson would shove over a cliff, safe in the knowledge that he could blame a deliverance style event but gradually we learn to love Steven and marvel at his endurance. Bill is clearly much fitter and much kinder but they make for a great team - take him somewhere else with you.
The journey explores not only the trail and their own experience of hardship but the recognition of the things that we all take for granted, 'a dew soaked, ice cold can of coke,' for example and the folks they meet on the way like the woman from Florida. We also look at, with Bill and Steven the dangers both real and imagined of walking out in the back country of America for America remains wild - only 2% of it 'built up.' Can you believe that.
Do yourselves a favour and read A Walk in The Woods.

Moose and Bears and Hikers, Oh My!
Never start reading a Bill Bryson book in a public place. This is the mistake I made with A Walk in the Woods, and I found myself giggling embarrassingly. Starting with the selection of equipment, and then the preparation for the journey by reading several terror-inducing stories of bear attacks, Bill Bryson continually amuses, educates and entertains.

Bryson sets off on one of the most physically and psychologically demanding tests of stamina that he could attempt: a hike along the Appalachian Trail. With his long-suffering friend Katz in tow, he encounters brutal weather, crazy hikers, price-gouging hostels, and random acts of kindness that make the whole thing worthwhile. I was especially touched to read about people who come to the AT specifically to leave things like snacks and books for the hikers.

Given that I am not in any kind of shape to attempt even a day hike on the AT, I enjoyed living vicariously through Bill Bryson's experiences. The vistas he got to view sounded amazing, and I could almost taste the wonderful, satisfying meals enjoyed when he was able to reach "home cooking" after many days on the Trail. In addition, his turns of phrase had me laughing out loud over and over again. The first Bryson book I've ever read, but definitely not the last.

What a fantastic read!
I'm not a big reader and had never before read a Bill Bryson book but was bought this for Christmas by my parents. I took it with me on holiday as essential beach reading and as soon as I started it, found it VERY hard to put down.

Bryson's writing style is easy to read and extremely entertaining whilest being factual and informative.

I have now started to read his 'Down Under' book and am quick becoming a big Bill Bryson fan!