A walk in the woods of the beauty of danger

Just as Sunday Times said “This is a seriously funny book.” It can’t be more true.

“A walk in the woods” tells a true story about how Bill Bryson and his out-of-shape fellow Stephen Katz covered the 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail, which stretches from Georgia to Maine, from south to north on the eastern coast of the U.S, how crazy it sounded at first and how difficult the whole project was and how they finally made it. It was a miracle.

It is really funny. I couldn’t help laughing out in the silent self-study room when I was immersed in his fantastic combination of the words and sentences, his extremely interesting jokes and relaxing language, even if he was describing the trouble they got into, the horrible bear they encountered, the heavy pack on the back and the despair they tried to avoid but sometimes failed, he kept telling a story in such a comfortable rhythm. Sometimes I just wonder how he could keep calm in such a frightening environment and then describe it as something happened on a planet that has not been named by human being. Let me give an example. It was one night when then slept in the mountain and Bryson heard some noise which was probably from a black bear. He warned Katz the coming monster and asked him whether he had got some ‘weapon’ to defend himself.

    ‘Stephen,’ I whispered at his tent, ‘did you pack a knife?’

    ‘No.’

    ‘Have you got something sharp at all?’

    He thought for a moment. ‘Nail clippers.’

    I made a despairing face. ‘Anything a little more vicious than that? Because, you see, there is definitely something out here. ’

Sometimes I was just under the illusion that I was reading a book about the hard journey in the woods but the script of ‘Friends’, which also happened in the U.S, but a department full of delicious food and close and friends, instead of the potentiality of being food of an evidently unfriendly stranger called ‘bear’ or something you even don’t know its name. But that’s his style. Challenge your nerves while laughing to tears.

But it is serious, essentially. You can see the sincerity and gravity it held through the total 350 pages, from the very start to the very end. It is true and rather natural he spent a lot of ink on the astonishing landscape of silent forests and sparkling lakes, on his fear when he was besieged by the freezing air and relief after escape from the hell, his resoluteness to conquer all the obstacles in the lonely forest and extreme happiness when back to the modern world which ‘produce’ comfort. But that’s not all. What distinguishes the book from other record of the adventure in the woods it the author’s caring beyond his personal experience and feelings.

He trudged along the trail, what’ more, he loved it and showed sympathy towards every life, the real owner of the woods. He offered a lot of historic contexts of the trail and the every national park on the way, he worried about the extinct species and complained about the government’s negligence of their duty, but also he understood their shortage of funds. He really worried, but never castigated, never lost his distinguished style of touching a serious topic with tender and elegance.

    The National Park service actually has something of a tradition of making things extinct.

    Thus the Park Service biologists managed wonderfully unusual accomplishment of discovering and eradicating in a new species of fish in the same instant.

What’s more serious and touching is, of course, the friendship, just as Bryson put in the frond page ‘To Katz, of course.’ They two had gone through too much together; they seemed not a good match in any aspect though. I even burst into tears when he lost Katz for a whole day in the woods and worrying that he would never saw him again and missed him forever in the rest of his life just because his crazy plan to conquer the trial. Fortunately, they met again. And, they decided to quit, with only one mountain left, seeing the victory waving but saying goodbye with pity buried in mind.

So, they didn’t complete actually, they hand only done 870 miles, considerably less than half, not a huge amount more than one-third, but apparently it paid off, as Bill put it,

    I thought for a moment, unsure. I had come to realize that I didn’t have any feelings towards the AT that weren’t thoroughly contradictory. I was weary of the trail, but captivated by it; found the endless slog increasingly exhausting but ever invigorating; grew tired of the boundless words but admired there boundlessness’ enjoyed the escape from civilization and ached for it’s comforts. All of this together, all at once, every moment, on the trail or off.

Then Katz went back to his country and they could only talk about the hard but happy days in the woods. They missed a lot. It just reminded the most moving words I have ever read. That’s from the last page of ‘On the Road’ by Jack Kerouac.

    ‘so in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it...’