A walk in the woods: rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail

After living abroad, Bryson decided to reacquaint himself with America by walking the famed Appalachian Trail, which traverses 14 states and stretches 2,100 miles. Bryson's book offers a marvelous description and history of the trail and the mountains.

Returning to the U.S. after 20 years in England, Iowa native Bryson decided to reconnect with his mother country by hiking the length of the 2100-mile Appalachian Trail. Awed by merely the camping section of his local sporting goods store, he nevertheless plunges into the wilderness and emerges with a consistently comical account of a neophyte woodsman learning hard lessons about self-reliance. Bryson (The Lost Continent) carries himself in an irresistibly bewildered manner, accepting each new calamity with wonder and hilarity. He reviews the characters of the AT (as the trail is called), from a pack of incompetent Boy Scouts to a perpetually lost geezer named Chicken John. Most amusing is his cranky, crude and inestimable companion, Katz, a reformed substance abuser who once had single-handedly "become, in effect, Iowa's drug culture." The uneasy but always entertaining relationship between Bryson and Katz keeps their walk interesting, even during the flat stretches. Bryson completes the trail as planned, and he records the misadventure with insight and elegance. He is a popular author in Britain and his impeccably graceful and witty style deserves a large American audience as well. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

YA-Leisurely walks in the Cotswolds during a 20-year sojourn in England hardly prepared Bryson for the rigors of the Appalachian Trail. Nevertheless, he and his friend Katz, both 40-something couch potatoes, set out on a cold March morning to walk the 2000-mile trail from Georgia to Maine. Overweight and out of shape, Katz jettisoned many of his provisions on the first day out. The men were adopted by Mary Ellen, a know-it-all hiker eager to share her opinions about everything. They finally eluded her, encountered some congenial hikers, and after eight days of stumbling up and down mountains in the rain and mud, came to Gatlinburg, TN. Acknowledging they would never make it the whole way, they decided to skip the rest of the Smokies and head for the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia-by car. Late that summer, for their last hike, the pair attempted to hike the Hundred Mile Wilderness in Maine, near the trail's end. They got separated and Bryson spent a day and night searching for his friend. When they finally were reunited, "...we decided to leave the endless trail and stop pretending we were mountain men because we weren't." This often hilarious account of the foibles of two inept adventurers is sprinkled with fascinating details of the history of the AT, its wildlife, and tales of famous and not-so-famous hikers. In his more serious moments, Bryson argues for the protection of this fragile strip of wilderness. YAs who enjoy the outdoors, and especially those familiar with the AT, will find this travelogue both entertaining and insightful.-Molly Connally, Kings Park Library, Fairfax County, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

This funny book has been well represented on radio and television talk shows, with Bryson presenting humorous and often poignant observations about his overweight, ex-alcoholic hiking partner Stephen Katz and their experiences along the Appalachian Trail (AT). Bryson had moved to England and gained most of his hiking experience along that country's friendly trails from village to village and pub to pub. An experienced travel writer (The Lost Continent, Audio Reviews, LJ 9/1/93), he decided to tackle the 2200-mile trail from Georgia to Maine‘and then discovered that wilderness hiking and British hiking are two very different things. Ultimately, Bryson and Katz struggle along a part of the southern trail and then abandon the whole idea. Bryson drives down and samples parts of the remaining AT, such as the Pennsylvania coal country, and finally he and Katz decide to give it another chance and set out into the 100-mile wilderness of Maine‘and quickly drop out again. The book's value lies in its humor and its trenchant observations on the environmental damage along selected portions of the trail and on the history both of the trail itself and the areas of the eastern mountains through which it winds. The author is often hilarious, his companion Katz is an entirely sympathetic character, and one learns a lot about those subjects Bryson touches upon. Fortunately, William Roberts is an excellent reader; his voice is alternately sardonic and matter-of-fact, just like Bryson writes. This will be popular in public library collections especially.‘Don Wismer, Cary Memorial Lib., Wayne, ME (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

The Appalachian TrailŽfrom Springer Mountain, Ga., to Mount Katahdin, Me.Žconsists 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 yuksŽthough it is hard not to grin idiotically through all 288 pagesŽfor 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 itŽs 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. ($150,000 ad/promo; author tour)

After living abroad, Bryson decides to reacquaint himself with America by walking the famed Appalachian Trail, which traverses 14 states and stretches 2,100 miles. He recruits his ne'er-do-well chum Stephen Katz, his traveling companion in Neither Here nor There (1991). They hadn't gotten along on that European trip, and this time Katz shows up extremely overweight, toting 75 pounds of Snickers bars. He is hardly a good choice for a hiking partner, but Bryson is happy just to have someone along to share the often difficult experience (and Katz does prove to be a very funny man). They set out from Amicalola Falls State (GA) Park carrying the official Appalachian Trail guides consisting of 11 books and 59 maps, which proved "monumentally useless." Although they fail to walk the entire trail (indeed, Katz falls behind almost immediately), Bryson's book is a marvelous description and history of the trail and the mountains, providing an informal record of the trail's founding and many of its hikers. Bryson's great good humor makes this a journey worth taking. ((Reviewed April 1, 1998)) Copyright 2000 Booklist Reviews

For readers who want more stories of epic hikes, Bryson's (At Home: A Short History of Private Life) illuminating portrait of the 2,184-mile Appalachian Trail makes for great parallel reading. Similar in concept to the Pacific Crest Trail but less grueling, the Appalachian Trail runs up the eastern coast through mountains, valleys, and lakes from Georgia to Maine. Bryson walked some of the trail with his high school friend Katz, a man even less equipped to undertake the journey than Bryson himself. Together, the two stumbled along, but the book is not so much about the walk they took as it is about the trail itself and the people and places they encountered along the way. Bryson is witty-sometimes laugh-out-loud funny and sometimes cuttingly sarcastic. He is also a fine observer of natural history, ecology, and local history. His detailed commentary on the sociology of the trail and its flora and fauna are brilliantly interwoven with his hike. For readers who want even more, there are many books detailing hikes on the Pacific Crest Trail. A good suggestion for a unique account is Angela and Duffy Ballard's A Blistered Kind of Love: One Couple's Trial by Trail. - "RA Crossroads" LJ Reviews 5/3/12 (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Returning to the U.S. after 20 years in England, Iowa native Bryson decided to reconnect with his mother country by hiking the length of the 2100-mile Appalachian Trail. Awed by merely the camping section of his local sporting goods store, he nevertheless plunges into the wilderness and emerges with a consistently comical account of a neophyte woodsman learning hard lessons about self-reliance. Bryson (The Lost Continent) carries himself in an irresistibly bewildered manner, accepting each new calamity with wonder and hilarity. He reviews the characters of the AT (as the trail is called), from a pack of incompetent Boy Scouts to a perpetually lost geezer named Chicken John. Most amusing is his cranky, crude and inestimable companion, Katz, a reformed substance abuser who once had single-handedly "become, in effect, Iowa's drug culture." The uneasy but always entertaining relationship between Bryson and Katz keeps their walk interesting, even during the flat stretches. Bryson completes the trail as planned, and he records the misadventure with insight and elegance. He is a popular author in Britain and his impeccably graceful and witty style deserves a large American audience as well. (May)

YA-Leisurely walks in the Cotswolds during a 20-year sojourn in England hardly prepared Bryson for the rigors of the Appalachian Trail. Nevertheless, he and his friend Katz, both 40-something couch potatoes, set out on a cold March morning to walk the 2000-mile trail from Georgia to Maine. Overweight and out of shape, Katz jettisoned many of his provisions on the first day out. The men were adopted by Mary Ellen, a know-it-all hiker eager to share her opinions about everything. They finally eluded her, encountered some congenial hikers, and after eight days of stumbling up and down mountains in the rain and mud, came to Gatlinburg, TN. Acknowledging they would never make it the whole way, they decided to skip the rest of the Smokies and head for the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia-by car. Late that summer, for their last hike, the pair attempted to hike the Hundred Mile Wilderness in Maine, near the trail's end. They got separated and Bryson spent a day and night searching for his friend. When they finally were reunited, "...we decided to leave the endless trail and stop pretending we were mountain men because we weren't." This often hilarious account of the foibles of two inept adventurers is sprinkled with fascinating details of the history of the AT, its wildlife, and tales of famous and not-so-famous hikers. In his more serious moments, Bryson argues for the protection of this fragile strip of wilderness. YAs who enjoy the outdoors, and especially those familiar with the AT, will find this travelogue both entertaining and insightful.-Molly Connally, Kings Park Library, Fairfax County, VA Copyright 1998 School Library Journal Reviews