Following my Bryson reading list, I finally finished Bill Bryson’s A Walk in The Woods, which I purchase over the summer. Having gone on hill walks and campouts myself, I eagerly anticipated my favorite author’s account of hiking in the Appalachian Trail. It was a nice read overall, but there were a few aspect that stood out to me as somewhat jarring.
Bryson’s language never disappoints. Always humorous and witty, his light, conversational tone, irony, and quaint metaphors make me burst out snorts of laughter every time. Words are really his talent. Just randomly opened a page in the book, and see for yourself the beauty of his dialogue: “(Bryson) How do we get to Knoxville? (Cab driver) How does a cab sound to you?” he barked. It might be a bit weird if you don’t know the context, but I just laughed out loud again. The smart use of language is the main reason why Bryson is my favorite author. What’s more, Bryson doesn’t just know how to use his words to great effect; he actually knows his words. I would always make sure that I have a dictionary beside me when I read his works because, man, this guy knows his diction. I had never heard of “clandestine,” “inclement,” or “mien” in my life before reading the book. I legitimately learned more lexis from reading Bryson’s work than a school years’ worth of English class put together.
With jargon, “A Walk in the Woods” is a bit better than “Notes from a Small Island.” And by jargon, I mean references that are supposed to be witty metaphors, including celebrities and regional phenomena. Being neither into celebrities (especially not ones from Bryson’s era, sorry) nor English culture, I was left confounded and confused on more than several occasions while reading Small Island. Maybe it’s because “A Walk in the Woods” is based in an American background; the most specialized jargon is “Snickers” or “Slim Jim’s,” which are more common and less region specific. Very much appreciated.
It’s really a wonder how a book about walking can culminate into 338 pages. But Bryson had done it somehow and most of it is well-executed – being on the trail doesn’t always mean walking. My favorite part of the book had to be the sudden snowstorm knee-high at the start of their journey, and also wading the creeks at the end. I guess I just liked the feel of adventure. Bryson also contains a fair share of his thoughts on the trail, many of which I agree with and others I find very enlightening. Attitude towards long-distance walking have never been better expressed: “The world, you realize, is enormous in a way that only you and a small community of fellow hikers know. Planetary scale is your little secret,” and “most of the time you don’t think. Instead, you exist in a kind of mobile zen mode, your brain like a balloon tethered on a string. Walking for miles becomes as automatic, as unremarkable, as breathing.” These are my exact thoughts while I go on hill walks myself but are unable to expressed through my meager literature attainment. It’s beautiful.
Bryson fills the gaps between adventuring, dialogues with Katz (his traveling companion), and inner monologues with history and scientific facts. These are nice in most cases, since almost every bit of history regarding the national park services was mingled with Bryson’s opinions. But it does become quite dull at some point. Pages after pages of facts on the geological history of the Appalachians when all I want to read is Bryson’s experiences now, not what happened 16 billion years ago. This phenomenon is very evident in the portion where Bryson hiked alone, with his car, off and on the trail. I don’t like that part. It feels detached from the other sections of the book and a bit random. And everything went back to normal after Katz joined Bryson for the Maine portion of the AT. It would be better off if he just cut those few chapters out; the book is long enough.
Anticlimax, I believe, is an interesting and integral feature of this book. Bryson and Katz began their hike with the vow to complete the AT, but were so traumatized by their experiences that they left the trail and hiked in segments. Initially, this is a bit disappointing from a storytelling perspective because there is always the anticipation that the protagonist will finish their adventure, and as the reader, I would follow them through. But I realize that this is the difference between fiction and non-fiction. Sitting and reading in an air-conditioned room, I would not have experienced the turmoil of walking some 15 miles a day in scorching weather on a wilderness trail. The anticlimax, the bathetic quality in the book, makes the experience much more real and, frankly, relatable. Still, this doesn’t entirely justify Bryson’s inclusion of almost 50 pages of day hikes where he simply rants about geology and history to fill in the gaps between AT segments. Frankly, that portion sounds exactly like my essays where I make up information to meet the minimum required word count.
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