A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail

by Bill Bryson

There is a painting by Asher Brown Durand called Kindred Spirits, which is often reproduced in books when the subject turns to the American landscape in the nineteenth century. Painted in 1849, it shows two men standing on a rock ledge in the Catskills in one of those sublime lost world settings that look as if they would take an expedition to reach, though the two figures in the painting are dressed, incongruously, as if for the office, in long coats and plump cravats.

On the first night you are starving for your noodles; on the second night you are starving but wish it wasn’t noodles; on the third you don’t want the noodles but know you had better eat something; by the fourth you have no appetite at all but just eat because that is what you do at this time of day.

Now here’s a thought to consider. Every twenty minutes on the Appalachian Trail, Katz and I walked further than the average American walks in a week.

Goodness knows what the world is coming to when park rangers carry service revolvers.

If there is a greater reason for being grateful to live in the twentieth century than the joy of stepping from the dog’s breath air of a really hot summer’s day into the crisp, clean, surgical chill of an air-conditioned establishment, then I can’t think of it.