A Walk in the Woods

Born in 1951 in Des Moines, Iowa, Bill Bryson holds dual American and British citizenship but has lived in England most of his adult life. Bryson first visited England in 1973 and was married there two years later, but the couple moved to the US in 1975 so that he could complete his education at Drake University. The couple moved back to England in 1977, where he began his career as a journalist and later an author. He has authored multiple books, several of which were bestsellers, focusing primarily on the subjects of travel, language, and popular science. Shortly before he began writing A Walk in the Woods in the mid-1990s, Bryson and his family moved back to the US, this time to Hanover, New Hampshire, where Bryson learned how close they lived to the Appalachian Trail and the idea struck him to attempt to hike it all. This book became a long-standing bestseller and inspired a sharp increase in people interested in hiking the AT.

Stephen Katz, whose full name is a pseudonym for Matt Angerer, is one of the two primary figures in A Walk in the Woods. Bryson and Katz grew up together in Iowa and were hiking companions in the early 1970s around Europe, which became the basis for Bryson’s 1991 book, Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe. While Bryson and Angerer are clearly old friends, Bryson acknowledges that they barely saw each other for decades. Angerer, who has alcoholism and spent time in jail at one point, wasn’t one of the many people that Bryson invited to hike with him, but Bryson was still elated when Angerer asked to come along because it meant he wouldn’t be going alone.

A local camping and hiking expert in Hanover, New Hampshire, David Mengle works at the Dartmouth Co-Op, where Bryson’s son was working a summer job at the time. When Bryson goes to the store to talk with Mengle, he patiently helps the skeptical Bryson understand and buy the needed gear, while Bryson is repeatedly struck not only by how expensive it all is but also by the fact that “every piece of equipment appeared to require some further piece of equipment” (13).

In Chapter 3, Bryson explains that the original plan for the AT was the brainchild of Benton MacKaye, a former employee of the National Forest Service and the US Labor Department. MacKaye developed the plan for the long-distance hiking trail in 1921 as a “thread connecting a network of mountaintop work camps” (39). His idea was that the trail would serve as “a retreat from profit” (39) and a place for urban workers to “refresh themselves” by enjoying nature. In 1930, a Washington lawyer and avid hiker named Myron Avery became involved and was instrumental in the trail’s actual construction, which was formally completed in 1937.

Bryson and Katz meet Wes Wisson in Chapter 3. A minor figure in the book, he operates a shuttle service that takes hikers traveling into Atlanta to the trail’s formal starting point, Springer Mountain in Georgia. As Wisson takes Bryson and Katz from Atlanta to Amicalola Falls Lodge near Springer, he explains that he has seen countless hikers over years and can generally tell which ones will be able to complete the whole trail and which ones will drop out early.

A hiker from Florida, Mary Ellen meets Bryson and Katz shortly after they first begin their hike. She attaches herself to them, hiking and camping with them for several days, but quickly becomes an annoying presence because of her know-it-all attitude about hiking and camping and her constant bluntness and disdain for how they hike and even how they look. As Bryson and Katz near the town of Hiawassee in Northern Georgia, they develop a plan to push hard the following day and find the highway so that they can hitchhike and catch a ride into town, effectively leaving Mary Ellen behind.

Bryson and Katz meet section hiker John Connolly while camping at a shelter in Shenandoah National Park. Bryson describes him in Chapter 12 as “a high school teacher from upstate New York” (213) who was hiking the trail alone only a few miles behind them. After camping together at the shelter, Connolly hikes with them for several miles the following day to a popular campground that has a restaurant and store but leaves them the next morning to return to his parked car.

Bryson meets Chicken John, a minor figure in the story, while day hiking in the Berkshire Hills of Western Massachusetts in Chapter 16. Chicken John is a thru-hiker who becomes an AT celebrity during this period because he’s notorious for getting lost, over and over again, sometimes as far as 30 miles off the trail. Bryson first hears of him back in Georgia but has no idea why the nickname “Chicken John” stuck with him. They hike together for a full day until reaching the town of Dalton.

A friend and neighbor of Bryson’s in Hanover, New Hampshire, Bill Abdu is, in Bryson’s estimation, “a very nice fellow, amiable and full of knowledge, experienced on mountain trails, and with the inestimable bonus that he is a gifted orthopedic surgeon” (317). Abdu joins Bryson for several of his day hikes in New Hampshire, including trips to Mount Lafayette and Mount Washington.