Adrienne Hall

This AT book has lots of trail history, policy, and natural history information, which I appreciated, but could sometimes be dry, so I had to slog through determinedly, much as if I was on a distance hike on a cold/ rainy/ buggy summer. Because of its density, it's not a read-all-in-one-sitting adventure story. Adrienne Hall admits she went along on the hike simply because it was her boyfriend's dream, but she brings to it her own curiosity, determination, and the knowledge from her show more environmental studies degree. They started the hike in February (!!!!?) of 1996. I found it to be a sad book. Hall says, "The AT was some of the most unenjoyable hiking I ever experienced." And it sounds awful. 1996 was the wettest year on record for the northeast since 1895. And starting in February is crazy, not only because of the cold and snow down south, but because it meant hitting New England during the worst bug season. Hall also finally says that she knew almost no female through-hikers, and she felt pressure to keep up a pace that was stressful for her body, which I think must have contrubuted to the misery. It's a cautionary tale...

A quick summary:
Chapter 1. Exploration of some of the trail's history, from its conception as Benton McKaye's brainchild in the 1920s, to Myron Avery's midwifery in the 20s and 30s. Cherokee homeland. Her great grandmother was a Cherokee. The social construct of wilderness as dark and terrifying to wilderness as valuable and inspiring. Biological diversity of the southern Appalachians. The cold. The mice. The cold.
Chapter 2. The Smokies. The Trail of Tears. The red wolf, and efforts to re-introduce it into the Smokies. The formation of the balds, and the maintenance of the balds when current conditions no longer support them. Bears, boars, and wire cage doors on shelters. Who pays for recreation areas? The cold and snow.
Chapter 3. The cold and snow.
Chapter 4. The cold and snow. Forest health. Air pollution and its consequences.
Chapter 5. Virginia. Amphibians as canaries in the coal mine. Salamanders breathe through their skin.
Chapter 6. Mid Atlantic states. Lots of complaining about people, overpopulation, cell phone towers, even cows and farms. Not my favorite chapter. At this point I googled the author, and found that she went on to move to Alaska (makes sense), and have three children (??).
Chapter 7. New England. Mosquitos. Women on the trail - or mostly not. Women, nature, goddesses, and history. More cold.
Chapter 8: The Whites. AMC's permit to run huts expires and needs to be renewed. More cold.
Chapter 9. Maine. The battle to purchase Saddleback from the ski resort. Baxter and Baxter State Park. Katahdin. show less

The author’s hike along the entire Appalachian Trail was as harrowing an experience as one would imagine it to be. She and her partner started in February, and it kept snowing heavily into May on the mountain ridges along which most of the trail lies. When it wasn’t snowing, it was often raining nonstop for days at a time. And on rare occasions when no abundant precipitation was descending upon them, they had to cross fields of sharp rocks, swamps or swollen rivers (where one hiker show more drowned that year), follow deeply flooded trails, or keep running to avoid being eaten alive by swarms of mosquitoes. The shelters they stayed at were usually infested with armies of mice, their sleeping bags and shoes were often wet, and their clothes tended to be wet and filthy into the bargain. Moreover, walking continuously up and down mountains takes a toll on one’s body, even if one is very fit and used to recreational hiking, as the author and her partner were. Hall writes that even early during the trip she had difficulty sleeping because she couldn’t find a position in which her hip joints didn’t hurt. By the end of it she had to take a handful of Advil every day. As she remarked to her partner, with characteristic humor, "Except that I can barely stand, I’m in the best shape of my life." Why on earth would anyone *dream* of experiencing any of this is beyond my comprehension, but, according to Hall, two thousand people try to hike the entire AT every year, with two hundred of them succeeding, and that’s not counting those who don’t attempt to walk the whole trail, of whom there are many more.

Still, surprisingly, I didn’t find Hall’s descriptions of her hike upsetting. Nor was she complaining about the hardships, as some Amazon reviewers wrote. In fact, I thought she was remarkably upbeat about them, writing that if "fellowship with wilderness" had to include mice, so be it. She was merely honest in describing what it is really like to hike the AT. Probably that’s what I really liked about this book. She wasn’t trying to sugarcoat her experience, or to please the reader with a reassuring picture of vast, healthy forests, diverse and abundant wildlife and pleasant tiredness one feels at the end of a day well spent. Perhaps, it’s also the fact that I’ve always assumed that people who climb a mountain on their own two feet are usually in no condition to enjoy the view. So I was actually pleasantly surprised by the number of occasions when they did enjoy the view or being on the trail in general. I also knew that the only substantial wild places left in the US are places that couldn’t be used for farming or pastures: tundra, desert, swamps and mountain ridges. Therefore, it didn’t surprise me that the hiking was arduous in the extreme, or that when there was no unwanted inhospitable area through which the trail could be laid, hikers had to walk across cow pastures or corn fields or within continuous sight of car roads. Interestingly, the author mentions the attempt to reintroduce red wolves into the Smoky Mountains National Park, which failed, because there was not enough prey in the mountains to allow the wolves to raise their families. Consequently the pup survival rate was zero, and wolves kept migrating from the park down into the agricultural valleys below. As I read Hall’s account of her trip, I couldn’t help comparing hikers – or anyone who wants to enjoy land in its natural state – to wolves and most other wild animals. Both have been forced into such places that the practical implementation of the scheme defeats the purpose: animals can’t survive, and hikers can’t enjoy the experience they have craved.

And this leads me to another point Hall is being very honest about in this book. Besides describing her trip as it was and admitting that mostly she didn’t enjoy it, she addresses the precarious situation of plants and animals in the places she passed through, and the various reasons behind it. By the time she sat down to write this book, she had earned a graduate degree in environmental science, and I particularly appreciated her discussion of the air quality problems in the eastern US, since I live here myself. I only wished that the book had been written later and offered more current information, although I highly suspect that the main issues remain unchanged. I must admit, though, that there were times when I had to set this book aside and give myself a break from it, just as Hall did from the trail, in my case because of my frustration with the people in power and their obtuse determination to pursue profits down the cliff. However, I do prefer – and even expect – to find researched background information in travel books of any type; otherwise it frankly quickly becomes boring for me to read an unending recitation of daily activities with nothing to flesh them out.

I think this book does have some flaws. For instance, I find the presentation of Native Americans’ stories and beliefs by way of explanation of the difference between their treatment of nature and that of European settlers to be illogical, for in reality, in any culture, stories and beliefs come from lifestyle rather than the other way around. Native Americans generally didn’t raise animals for food and depended on the wilderness to provide them with most of their meat; European settlers did not. Hall herself mentions the change in the treatment of nature in the Old World in prehistoric times, but credits it to invasions by "patriarchal" peoples rather than a change in lifestyle; however, any such invasions would be of a fairly regional character, while the author admits that the Earth/Mother goddess religion, subsequently abandoned everywhere, used to be *very* widespread. I also didn’t appreciate Hall’s personal musings about her trip; I must say that I’m yet to read the what-I’ve-learned-from-this-experience kind of reflections in any memoirs that I’d find at all original. However, on the whole I found this a very interesting and worthwhile book.

And then when I got to the end of it, I was rewarded with reading about Percival Baxter. Baxter lived in the first half of the twentieth century. Although born into a rich family, he wanted to protect a vast tract of unspoiled Maine wilderness for people of moderate means to enjoy (and leave it as they found it – no hunting, trapping, hotels, or vehicles of any type were to be permitted there). When he found that he couldn’t do anything useful as a state legislator and later governor, he quit politics (how many politicians have you heard about who’d done that?), and worked with the land owners to gradually buy the tracts he wanted with his own money. Later he donated these lands to the state of Maine (with conditions for their preservation). Hall also mentions in passing Baxter’s other deeds, such as giving the state an island "to be used as a home for sick and underprivileged children" or providing "$625,000 to reconstruct the school for the deaf", among others, but his main endeavor was creating a state park around Katahdin that now bears his name. According to Hall, Baxter’s last words (at the age of 92) were: "Pray for me. It is not that I’m afraid of dying, it is just that I have so much left to do." It’s certainly inspiring to read about somebody who could lead a peaceful existence, living like a king and having everybody’s goodwill, as is usually the case with rich people who don’t get into anybody’s way – but who chose to spend it in continuous difficult negotiations with property owners and politicians. I think that, in a sense, it’s similar to what Adrienne Hall has done with her hike and the resulting book. She persevered through an ordeal most people wouldn’t even start and then wrote a truthful and informative book about it, instead of a presenting a rosy view of bountiful and sublime nature and tough hikers, which would have definitely sold far more copies and quite likely led to lucrative publishing contracts in the future. For this, I’m perfectly willing to forgive her some banal personal thoughts and some gaffes with ancient history. show less

In this short book the author devotes considerable attention to her relationship with her Appalachian Trail (AT) hiking companion and eventual fiancé, plus she chooses to reflect on many topics that are only indirectly related to their journey. This means there is not so much time left to describe the AT thru hike itself. What she does recount of the journey comes across as a fairly unremitting tale of misery that took incredible commitment to overcome. For a prospective thru hiker, it show more would be instructive reading. Some possible takeaways include:

Do not start an AT thru hike in mid-February. This is winter, even in Georgia and Tennessee. One could bring oneself a heap of misery and squander the momentum those first months on the trail can provide.

Do not bring a dog on the AT unless you are ready to take every possible precaution to keep your pet safe and healthy.

Beware the thru hiker's myopia. The thru hiker's many hardships and privations often necessitate a Faustian bargain: adapt to and integrate into the norms of a thru hiker culture that provides community and support in the face of these hardships, but do so at the risk of having its very insularity result in an experience that can be self-referential and fairly generic across thru hikes. The AT is long but it need not be narrow. show less

Fairly decent account of trail life on the Appalachian Trail interspersed with some bizarre tangents that I didn't care for. Was going to give the book 2 stars until I came to the passage where they describe their dog getting shot multiple times with a shotgun (from hunters) and forcing the poor thing to hike with them the very next day. The dog luckily survives and is picked up by family shortly thereafter, but the author and her boyfriend's lack of empathy and common sense ruined the rest show more of the story for me. show less