A very long walk

I’ve never really been the outdoors-y type. I can count the number of times I’ve been hiking on one hand (and maybe a couple more fingers). When I was 9 years old, I went on a camping trip with my Girl Scout troop. I made it one night, then called my parents and demanded that they pick me up and bring me back to civilization. Yes, s’mores are yummy, but even they can’t make up for the discomfort of sleeping in a tent, surrounded by mosquitoes.

So, I can’t even imagine the horrors of spending days, even weeks and months at a time in the wilderness. But apparently thousands of (crazy) people do so every year on the Appalachian Trail. One person who attempted it is Bill Bryson, who then wrote a wildly entertaining book, “A Walk in the Woods,” which I just finished reading.

Bryson decided to hit the trail after he moved to New Hampshire and realized that the trail ran past his house. Many trips to the sporting goods store later, he found himself traipsing through the woods in the company of his overweight, out-of-shape friend, Katz, who has a disconcerting tendency to lighten his backpack by tossing key items like food and water over cliffs.

Neither one is an experienced hiker, and they soon give up their plan of walking the entire trail, which runs from Georgia to Maine, a distance of approximately 2,100 miles (apparently the distance keeps changing as the trail route is shifted). Of the 2,000 people who start on the trail each year, only 10 percent make it to the end. Bryson ends up skipping a few states and covering about 870 miles.

I found myself laughing out loud during several scenes, especially Bryson's encounters with bizarre hikers on the trail. The book alternates between descriptions of his travels and journalistic explorations of topics such as the history and geology of the trail, the vast mismanagement of U.S. wilderness by the National Park Service, and the many ways hikers have died on the trail (not a very cheery topic for potential hikers).

At one of Bryson’s first stops, in Neels Gap, Georgia, he and Katz visit a convenience store, where Bryson has the following epiphany:

"I was beginning to learn that the central feature of life on the Appalachian Trail is deprivation, that the whole point of the experience is to remove yourself so thoroughly from the conveniences of everyday life that the most ordinary things—processed cheese, a can of pop gorgeously beaded with condensation—fill you with wonder and gratitude."

I think I’ll keep the processed cheese and “pop” and leave the hiking to more adventurous souls…. :)