A highly informative book about the author's fond, hilarious, and totally entertaining experience while walking the Appalachian Trail. As he and his fellow unlikely hiker and traveling companion Stephen Katz walk the trails and commune with nature, in a funny, descriptive but sometimes satirical way, he also gives tidbits of information regarding some of his thoughts on America and the environment.
'Not long after I moved with my family to a small town in New Hampshire I happened upon a path that vanished into a wood on the edge of town.'(opening lines)
'Nearly everyone I talked to had some gruesome story involving a guileless acquaintance who had gone off hiking the trail with high hopes and new boots and come stumbling back two days later with a bobcat attached to his head or dripping blood from an armless sleeve and whispering in a hoarse voice, "Bear!" before sinking into a troubled unconsciousness.'(5)
'The path they built had no historical basis. It didn't follow any Indian trails or colonial post roads. It didn't even seek out the best views, highest hills, or most notable landmarks. In the end, it went nowhere near Mount Mitchell, though it did take in Mount Washington and then carried on another 350 miles to Mount Katahdin in Maine.'(29)
'It was hell. First days on hiking trips always are. I was hopelessly out of shape -- hopelessly. The pack weighed way too much. Way too much. I have never encountered anything so hard, for which I was so ill prepared. Every step was a struggle.'(35)
'Finally with a weary puff, you roll over, unhook yourself from your pack, struggle to your feet, and realize -- again in a remote, light-headed, curiously not-there way -- that the view is sensational: a homeless vista of wooded mountains, unmarked by human hand, marching off in every direction. This really could be heaven. It's splendid, no question, but the thought you cannot escape is that you have to walk this view, and this is the barest fraction of what you will traverse before you've finished.'(36)
'There is no point in hurrying because you are not going anywhere. However far or long you plod, you are always in the same place: in the woods. It's where you were yesterday, where you will be tomorrow. The woods is one boundless singularity. Every bend in the path presents a prospect indistinguishable from every other, every glimpse into the trees the same tangled mass. For all you know, your route could describe a very large, pointless circle. In a way, it would hardly matter.'(72)
'At the time of our hike, the Appalachian Trail was fifty-nine years old. That is, by American standards, incredibly venerable. The Oregon and Santa Fe Trails didn't last long. Route 66 didn't last long. The old coast-to-coast Lincoln Highway, a road that brought transforming wealth and life to hundreds of little towns, so important and familiar that it became known as "America's Main Street," didn't last long. Nothing in America does. If a product or enterprise doesn't constantly reinvent itself, it is superseded, cast aside, abandoned without sentiment in favor of something bigger, newer, alas, nearly always uglier. And then there is the good old AT, still quietly ticking along after six decades, unassuming, splendid, faithful to its founding principles, sweetly unaware that the world has quite moved on. It's a miracle really.'(104)
'I don't mean to suggest that hiking the AT drives you potty, just that it takes a certain kind of person to do it.'(114)
'That was the trouble with the AT -- it was all one immensely long place, and there was more of it, infinitely more of it, than I could ever conquer. It wasn't that I wanted to quit. Quite the contrary. I was happy to walk, keen to walk. I just wanted to know what I was doing out here.'(177)
'In America, alas, beauty has become something you strive to, and nature an either/or proposition -- either you ruthlessly subjugate it, as at Tocks Dam and a million other places, or you defy it, treat it as something holy and remote, a thing apart, as along the Appalachian Trail. Seldom would it occur to anyone on either side that people and nature could coexist to their mutual benefit -- that, say, a more graceful bridge across the Delaware River might actually set off the grandeur around it, that the AT might be more interesting and rewarding if it wasn't all wilderness, if from time to time it purposely took you past grazing cows and tilled fields.'(200)
'I still had my wits about me. Or at least I felt as if I did. Presumably, a confused person would be too addled to recognize that he was confused. Ergo, if you know that you are not confused then you are not confused. Unless, it suddenly occurred to me -- and here was an arresting notion -- unless persuading yourself that you are not confused is merely a cruel, early symptom of confusion. Or even an advanced symptom. Who could tell? For all I knew I could be stumbling into some kind of helpless preconfusional state characterized by the fear on the part of the sufferer that he may be stumbling into some kind of helpless preconfusional state. That's the trouble with losing your mind; by the time it's gone, it's too late to get it back.'(225)
"Well, has it occurred to you what a ranger would say if he found you setting off the Hundred Mile Wilderness with a newspaper delivery bag? Do you know they have the power to detain anyone they think is not mentally or physically fit?" This was actually a lie, but it brought a promising hint of frown to his brow. "Also, has it occurred to you that maybe the reason paperboys don't get hernias is that they only carry the bag for an hour or so a day -- that maybe it might not be so comfortable lugging it for ten hours at a stretch over mountains -- that maybe it would bang endlessly against your legs and rub your shoulders raw?"(237)
'It is an extraordinary experience to find yourself face-to-face in the woods with a wild animal that is very much larger than you. You know these things are out there, of course, but you never expect any particular moment to encounter one, certainly not up close -- and this one was close enough that I could see the haze of flealike insects floating in circles about its head. We stared at each other for a good minute, neither of us sure what to do. There was a certain obvious and gratifying tang of adventure in this, but also something much more low-key and elemental -- a kind of respectful mutual acknowledgment that comes with sustained eye contact. It was this that was unexpectedly thrilling -- the sense that there was in some small measure a salute in our cautious mutual appraisal. I was smitten.'(241)
'I had come to realize that I didn't have any feelings towards the AT trail that weren't confused and contradictory. I was weary of the trail, but still strangely in its thrall; found the endless slog tedious but irresistible; grew tired of the boundless woods but admired their boundlessness; enjoyed the escape from civilization and ached for its comforts. I wanted to quit and to do this forever, sleep in a bed and in a tent, see what was over the next hill and never see a hill again. All of this all at once, every moment, on the trail or off.'(271)
Broadway Books, First Paperback edition 1999
274 pages
Book borrowed from the library
Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge
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