Product Description

The Appalachian Trail trail stretches from Georgia to Maine and covers some of the most breathtaking terrain in America–majestic mountains, silent forests, sparking lakes. If you’re going to take a hike, it’s probably the place to go. And Bill Bryson is surely the most entertaing guide you’ll find. He introduces us to the history and ecology of the trail and to some of the other hardy (or just foolhardy) folks he meets along the way–and a couple of bears. Already a classic, A Walk in the Woods will make you long for the great outdoors (or at least a comfortable chair to sit and read in).

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #617 in Books
• Published on: 2006-12-26
• Released on: 2006-12-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 397 pages

Review
“Bryson is a very funny writer who could wring humor from a clammy sleeping bag.” –The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Short of doing it yourself, the best way of escaping into nature is to read a book like A Walk in the Woods.”–The New York Times

“A terribly misguided, and terribly funny tale of adventure.... The yarn is choke-on-your-coffee funny.” –The Washington Post

“Bill Bryson could write an essay about dryer lint or fever reducers and still make us laugh out loud.” –Chicago Sun-Times

“Delightful.” –The Plain Dealer

“It’s great adventure, on a human sacle, with survuivable discomforts, and, happily, everybody goes home afterwards.” –Times Picayune

About the Author
Bill Bryson's bestselling books include A Walk in the Woods, Neither Here Nor There, In a Sunburned Country, Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words, and A Short History of Nearly Everything, the latter of which earned him the 2004 Aventis Prize. Bryson lives in England with his wife and children.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
We hiked till five and camped beside a tranquil spring in a small, grassy clearing in the trees just off the trail.  Because it was our first day back on the trail, we were flush for food, including perishables like cheese and bread that had to be eaten before they went off or were shaken to bits in our packs, so we rather gorged ourselves, then sat around smoking and chatting idly until persistent and numerous midgelike creatures (no-see-ums, as they are universally known along the trail) drove us into our tents.  It was perfect sleeping weather, cool enough to need a bag but warm enough that you could sleep in your underwear, and I was looking forward to a long night's snooze--indeed was enjoying a long night's snooze--when, at some indeterminate dark hour, there was a sound nearby that made my eyes fly open.  Normally, I slept through everything--through thunderstorms, through Katz's snoring and noisy midnight pees--so something big enough or distinctive enough to wake me was unusual.  There was a sound of undergrowth being disturbed--a click of breaking branches, a weighty pushing through low foliage--and then a kind of large, vaguely irritable snuffling noise.

Bear!

I sat bolt upright.  Instantly every neuron in my brain was awake and dashing around frantically, like ants when you disturb their nest.  I reached instinctively for my knife, then realized I had left it in my pack, just outside the tent.  Nocturnal defense had ceased to be a concern after many successive nights of tranquil woodland repose.  There was another noise, quite near.

"Stephen, you awake?"  I whispered.

"Yup," he replied in a weary but normal voice.

"What was that?"

"How the hell should I know."

"It sounded big."

"Everything sounds big in the woods."

This was true.  Once a skunk had come plodding through our camp and it had sounded like a stegosaurus.  There was another heavy rustle and then the sound of lapping at the spring.  It was having a drink, whatever it was.

I shuffled on my knees to the foot of the tent, cautiously unzipped the mesh and peered out, but it was pitch black.  As quietly as I could, I brought in my backpack and with the light of a small flashlight searched through it for my knife.  When I found it and opened the blade I was appalled at how wimpy it looked.  It was a perfectly respectable appliance for, say, buttering pancakes, but patently inadequate for defending oneself against 400 pounds of ravenous fur.

Carefully, very carefully, I climbed from the tent and put on the flashlight, which cast a distressingly feeble beam.  Something about fifteen or twenty feet away looked up at me.  I couldn't see anything at all of its shape or size--only two shining eyes.  It went silent, whatever it was, and stared back at me.

"Stephen," I whispered at his tent, "did you pack a knife?"

"No."

"Have you get anything sharp at all?"

He thought for a moment.  "Nail clippers."

I made a despairing face.  "Anything a little more vicious than that?  Because, you see, there is definitely something out here."

"It's probably just a skunk."

"Then it's one big skunk.  Its eyes are three feet off the ground."

"A deer then."

I nervously threw a stick at the animal, and it didn't move, whatever it was.  A deer would have bolted.  This thing just blinked once and kept staring.

I reported this to Katz.

"Probably a buck.  They're not so timid.  Try shouting at it."

I cautiously shouted at it: "Hey!  You there!  Scat!"  The creature blinked again, singularly unmoved.  "You shout," I said.

"Oh, you brute, go away, do!"  Katz shouted in merciless imitation.  "Please withdraw at once, you horrid creature."

"Fuck you," I said and lugged my tent right over to his.  I didn't know what this would achieve exactly, but it brought me a tiny measure of comfort to be nearer to him.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm moving my tent."

"Oh, good plan.  That'll really confuse it."

I peered and peered, but I couldn't see anything but those two wide-set eyes staring from the near distance like eyes in a cartoon.  I couldn't decide whether I wanted to be outside and dead or inside and waiting to be dead.  I was barefoot and in my underwear and shivering.  What I really wanted--really, really wanted--was for the animal to withdraw.  I picked up a small stone and tossed it at it.  I think it may have hit it because the animal made a sudden noisy start (which scared the bejesus out of me and brought a whimper to my lips) and then emitted a noise--not quite a growl, but near enough.  It occurred to me that perhaps I oughtn't provoke it.

"What are you doing, Bryson?  Just leave it alone and it will go away."

"How can you be so calm?"

"What do you want me to do?  You're hysterical enough for both of us."

"I think I have a right to be a trifle alarmed, pardon me.  I'm in the woods, in the middle of nowhere, in the dark, staring at a bear, with a guy who has nothing to defend himself with but a pair of nail clippers.  Let me ask you this.  If it is a bear and it comes for you, what are you going to do--give it a pedicure?"

"I'll cross that bridge when I come to it," Katz said implacably.

"What do you mean you'll cross that bridge?  We're on the bridge, you moron.  There's a bear out here, for Christ sake.  He's looking at us.  He smells noodles and Snickers and--oh, shit."

"What?"

"Oh.  Shit."

"What?"

"There's two of them.  I can see another pair of eyes."  Just then, the flashlight battery started to go.  The light flickered and then vanished.  I scampered into my tent, stabbing myself lightly but hysterically in the thigh as I went, and began a quietly frantic search for spare batteries.  If I were a bear, this would be the moment I would choose to lunge.

"Well, I'm going to sleep," Katz announced.

"What are you talking about?  You can't go to sleep."

"Sure I can.  I've done it lots of times."  There was the sound of him rolling over and a series of snuffling noises, not unlike those of the creature outside.

"Stephen, you can't go to sleep," I ordered.  But he could and he did, with amazing rapidity.

The creature--creatures, now--resumed drinking, with heavy lapping noises.  I couldn't find any replacement batteries, so I flung the flashlight aside and put my miner's lamp on my head, made sure it worked, then switched it off to conserve the batteries.  Then I sat for ages on my knees, facing the front of the tent, listening keenly, gripping my walking stick like a club, ready to beat back an attack, with my knife open and at hand as a last line of defense.  The bears--animals, whatever they were--drank for perhaps twenty minutes more, then quietly departed the way they had come.  It was a joyous moment, but I knew from my reading that they would be likely to return.  I listened and listened, but the forest returned to silence and stayed there.

Eventually I loosened my grip on the walking stick and put on a sweater--pausing twice to examine the tiniest noises, dreading the sound of a revisit--and after a very long time got back into my sleeping bag for warmth.  I lay there for a long time staring at total blackness and knew that never again would I sleep in the woods with a light heart.

And then, irresistibly and by degrees, I fell asleep.



    


From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews

It's not only funny, it's educational.
Bill Bryson has a great sense of humor and an excellent, precise way of expressing it. My husband had just had heart surgery when I started reading this book. I was concerned that my LOL while reading A Walk in the Woods might disturb him as I sat next to his hospital bed. However, on the other hand, I thought it might expedite the healing process. He told me later he heard me laughing and it made him feel better. So, there you go, Bill, your book is good for heart patients!!

Bill and buddy, Stephen Katz, the only person to take Bill up on the offer to join him as he hiked the Appalachian Trail in 1997?, began their odyssey on March 9 (this just happened to be the day I began reading the book...2007). The laughs came early and continued throughout, though parts of the book are more history and information than comedy. I took notes in these sections.

Both Bryson and Katz were out of shape when they hit the AT, but Bill noticed his body slimming and becoming more svelte right away (one thing I looked for, but never found, was word on how the adventure affected Katz's weight and figure. I would've been interested in knowing that). The men hiked the AT in two segments and, incidentally, did not hike the entire trail, which they decided was okay. I agree. At any rate, they hiked a few weeks in pre- and early spring and again in the heat of August. While they were off the trail, Bryson took day trips to walk parts of the AT between where he and Katz left off and the Hundred Mile Wilderness in Maine they planned to hike in August. This book not only tells the tale of two men attempting to walk the 2,200 miles of the AT, but is full of history lessons, geological and geographical information, stories of lost/doomed hikers, and social intercourse (i.e., the more than rude, self-centered, and boorish hikers the boys meet on their next to last day on the trail the first time).

This book is a good companion so read it slowly, digest it thoroughly, and you will enjoy it immensely.

Carolyn Rowe Hill

Nature writing and a travelogue with "oomph"!
Perhaps it was a fit of angst dealing with his own personal version of a mid-life crisis that led Bill Bryson to tackle the challenge of hiking the 2,100 mile Appalachian Trail! It was certainly a solid understanding of his own personality and clear recognition of his own physical and mental limitations that prompted him to invite his friend, Stephen Katz, an overweight and out of shape recovering alcoholic with an inordinate fondness for snack foods and cream soda to accompany him on this daunting challenge. The demands of the AT ultimately proved too much for Bryson and Katz who sensibly (and with an almost relieved sense of philosophical acceptance) decided to abandon the notion of a complete through hike. But the resulting story, drawn from Bryson's daily journal of the summer's efforts, is an overwhelming success and pure joy in the reading.

"A Walk in the Woods" is an extraordinary, entertaining travelogue on both the AT - the Appalachian Trail - and the people and places of small town America that dot the trail's path along the eastern seaboard from Georgia to Maine. At the same time, it is much, much more. Bryson is scathing in his political commentary and almost enraged criticism of the ongoing state of mismanagement and the sadly misguided policies of both the Parks and Forest Services of the US government. "A Walk in the Woods" is also a deeply moving introspective examination on the nature of friendship, family, perseverance, joy and despondency. As he and Katz amble along rock strewn trails dappled with sunlight broken by the leafy forest canopy, Bryson frequently, effortlessly and almost without our even noticing the change, wanders metaphorically off the main trail and onto a side path of lightweight but nonetheless informative and educational sidebars of nature writing on an amazingly wide variety of topics. Glaciation, bears, bugs, ecology, continental drift, hypothermia, hypoxia and weather are only a few examples of the topics which he elucidates for the lay reader with his clear, concise prose.

Then there is the humour! It is perhaps an understatement to say that, in this regard, Bryson has a rare gift. He has treated his readers to laughs originating in every imaginable corner of the vast world of humour - wry sardonic wit; biting satire; slapstick; self effacement; sarcasm and insults; fear; and even extended comedy sketches worthy of stage or television. His description of the astonishingly stupid and entirely self-absorbed fellow hiker Mary Ellen who has the annoying habit of constantly clearing her sinuses with a grating honk is definitely laugh-out-loud material.

Pure entertainment and enjoyment from first page to last. I believe Bill Bryson would consider it a compliment if I suggested that "A Walk in the Woods" is the first book I've ever read with a smile on my face during every single moment of the reading. Highly recommended - even if you've never spent a single night under nylon in the woods.

Paul Weiss

Laughing out loud while I'm riding the train
I'm about 2/3 of the way through this amazing book and have to let everyone know that you need to read this one. I have been reading it during my train commute, grinning from ear to ear, and cackling out loud every few minutes.

The book alternates between a hilarous telling of a lengthy hike along the Appalachian Trail by the author and his out-of-shape buddy Stephen, and a well-researched description of the AT's construction, history, & ecology. The stories of their hiking-gear research, the author's deathly fear of bears, and their run-ins with neurotic fellow hiker Mary Ellen had me in tears.

This book ties with "Catch 22" as the funniest I've ever read, just ahead of Palahniuk's "Lullaby".