A British writer hiking the Appalachian Trail
Bill Bryson is a witty writer, and his account of a hike along the Appalachian trail in the summer of 1996 is at times hilarious. He also provides a lot of interesting history, geology and ecology. As he is considering doing the walk, he reads a book about bear attacks and almost decides not to go. He contacts many of his friends to find someone to go with him, and Stephen Katz, a reformed alcoholic and out of shape, decides to come along. Katz's antics are some of the funniest parts of the book. They hike willingly from the start of the trail through Georgia, cross the Tennessee portion, then hike the Shenadoah portion to Front Royal. They started in March and it is now May. They decide to take the summer to attend to other business, but promise to meet in August to do the Maine portion of the trail. Bryson day hikes along snippets of the trail in Pennsylvania (his account of the Centralia anthracite coal fire, burning since 1962, is fascinating), Delaware Water Gap, Massachussets, Vermont and New Hampshire. He almost freezes in a change of weather on Mount Washington. Katz joins him in Maine, and they start across the Hundred Mile Wilderness, the most difficult part of the trail. They walk for several days in very hot weather, climbing nearly vertical rock walls and fording a pond. Katz becomes disoriented with thirst, and lost the trail for a day. After a few more miles, the pair decide that they have had it, find a logging road and hitch a ride to Milo, Me. In the end, Bryson figures he had hiked for 870 miles, about a third of the trail's length. ( )

Author and humorist Bill Bryson writes about his experiences hiking the Appalachian Trail in the mid-1990s. This tale has been charming readers for nearly three decades, but it fell a bit flat for me. Unlike Grandma Gatewood, whose walk I read about last year, Bryson didn’t actually hike the entire trail Also, I didn’t appreciate the slightly contemptuous, condescending tone Bryson assumes toward the Southern Appalachians and especially Gatlinburg, a tourist spot for many, but also a stomping ground for locals like me. Bryson bemoans the fact that of the fifteen Gatlinburg tourist attractions he listed in his The Lost Continent, published nearly a decade earlier, only three of them were still there when he returned on his Appalachian Trail journey. I can tell you that at least three of them weren’t in Gatlinburg a decade earlier, either, because they were actually several miles away in Pigeon Forge. I’ve been to Bonnie Lou and Buster’s music theater (although not for the Bonnie Lou and Buster Country Music Show), and it was most definitely in Pigeon Forge. So was Carbo’s Police Museum and the Irlene Mandrell Hall of Stars Museum and Shopping Mall. Bryson claims the missing attractions had been replaced by new ones such as Hillbilly Golf, which was already there the first time he visited Gatlinburg. I guess he just missed it. When I was a child and eagerly anticipating a trip to Gatlinburg, Hillbilly Golf was the landmark that indicated we had arrived. It makes me wonder about what else Bryson missed in places that I’m not familiar with. ( )

Not the best, but still gave me a chuckle and a think. ( )

On three attempts, I made it all the way to page 9. This is just not my kind of thing, so I'm not going to even rate it.

This was the first Bryson book I read, and I enjoyed every page. Living in Seoul at the time, I was aching for the woods, and this was a great remedy. Bryson's wit weren't lost as he talked about hiking the trail as a non-hiker. It gave me a great taste of the backcountry while surrounded by 18 million other residents. ( )