This book in four words: Quick read. Entertaining.
Thoughtful.
The thoughtfulness is what surprised me.
I wouldn’t be rich if I had a dollar for each time
someone told me I should read this book after finding out I’m planning to hike
the Appalachian Trail, but I’d have a tidy ten dollars to buy a few ice cream
cones.
Whaddya know? I SHOULD read this book. And I’m glad I
did! Here’s why:
Bill Bryson’s bottomless well of dead-pan humor and neatly
delivered snark characterizes the story of two, occasionally hapless, middle-aged
men on a long-distance hike. You need to keep reading to really catch it. His
reference to bear-attack books that made me smile in the first pages came back
half way through the book to make me literally laugh out loud. Oh, you’ll see
why.
His conversations on the changing environment in and
around the A.T. popped up so suddenly in the midst of afternoon rambles that it
often took a paragraph for me to realize he was discussing a serious problem. He
treats sad realities with grace and humor but doesn’t lose sight of how
troubling they are, or of the beauty that remains. They were moving environmental essays that only sometimes seemed awkwardly plopped in the
middle of a different story.
Those environmental bits have stuck with me since I
finished the book. That's where you have the unexpected thoughtfulness.
I’m sure when I’m hiking in a few months I’ll think of
his stories of damp nights in rodent-overrun shelters and smile (or grimace).
But I’ll be thinking more of hundreds of acres of forest lost in Great
Smoky
Mountain National Park, and hundreds of species of now extinct northern
songbirds.
