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June 13, 2005
Walking In The Woods
I finished listening to Bill Bryson's A Walk In The Woods last week. It was almost as good as In a Sunburned Country and had a better narrative. It tells the story of Bryson's attempt to walk the Appalachian trail with one of his old friends. The entire trail is over 2,100 miles long and he gets through about 40% of it over the course of a summer, which is fairly impressive. His history of trail was fairly well done and Bryson's best aside was about the history of botany in America and how it combined with early attempts in exploration. It is especially interesting after his earlier description of England's rather dull plant life in his less interesting book Notes From A Small Island.
I have done similar (though much shorter) hikes before, especially when I was a boy scout. We would do weekend hikes of around 10 miles each way up and down the mountain a few times each year in the San Bernardino mountains in southern California. The sections we tended to hike at were not very beautiful mountains, but they were close and had good trails. The most beautiful mountains I have backpacked in were the Sierra Nevada, although I have done day hikes in the Rockies several times. The only thing close to what Bryson has done that I attempted was Philmont Ranch in New Mexico, which is less of a challenge physically than most of the Appalachian Trail and if I remember correctly we hiked around 100 miles over 10 days. I could relate to Bryson’s exhaustion at carrying a third of his weight on his back for several days in a row. I was surprised his friend lasted as long as he did as he had not done any training before the trip and even for something as relatively easy as Philmont we trained for a couple months beforehand. I was also surprised at how little dangerous wildlife he encountered. He may have seen a bear once (it was night at the time), but aside from a moose and some deer he did not see much in the way of animals. A fellow boy scout a few steps ahead of me almost stepped on a rattlesnake sunning himself on the trail at Philmont and we were only on the trail a few days, yet Bryson stayed away from dangerous animals for weeks at a time. He did almost die in a blizzard though and once a rather dimwitted security gaurd tried to have him arrested so it was not always that safe.
I have only spent a few hours in the Appalachian mountains before while driving through them in Pennsylvania, but could still see how hikers could get lost in the massive wilderness of these forests. My next challenge is to listen to David McCullough’s 21 tape long biography of John Adams.
Posted by Pete at June 13, 2005 09:52 AM
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