A Walk In The Woods

Back in America after 20 years in Britain, Bill Bryson decided to reacquaint himself with his native country by walking the 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail, which stretches from Maine to Georgia. His accomplice is like many I've had on sojourns, one who is gloriously out-of-shape, a fellow named Stephen Katz.

It all started with Benton MacKaye, a mild, kindly, infinitely all-meaning visionary. In 1921, he unveiled an ambitious plan for a long-distance hiking trail along the full length of the Appalachians from Maine to Georgia. To say his life at this point was not going well would be to engage in careless understatement 

Herewith are some selected Bryson quotes of note from A Walk In The Woods: "It was hell. First days on hiking trips always are. I was hopelessly out of shape -- hopelessly. The pack weighed way too much. Way too much. I had never encountered anything so hard, for which I was I was so ill-prepared. Every step was a struggle."

"Henry David Thoreau thought nature was splendid, splendid indeed, so long as he could stroll to town for cakes and barley wine, but when he experienced real wilderness, on a visit to Katahdin in 1846, he was unnerved to the core. The experience left him, in the words of one biographer, 'near hysterical.'"

When hiking, "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. It's quite wonderful, really. You have no engagements, commitments, obligations, or duties; no special ambitions." (You are) "far removed from the seats of strife."

Such is the life of a long range hiker and explorer of the mountain country, one that I treasured in my time as a wilderness ranger for the U.S. Forest Service. It was only a seasonal gig, but one that paid well enough to fund my undergraduate and graduate school endeavors. I will treasure that time always.