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

by Bill Bryson

There is a strange frozen violence in a forest out of season. Every glade and dale seemed to have just completed some massive cataclysm. Downed trees lay across the path every fifty or sixty yards, often with great bomb craters of dirt around their splayed roots. Dozens more lay rotting on the slopes, and every third or fourth tree, it seemed, was leaning steeply on a neighbor. It was as if the trees couldn’t wait to fall over, as if their sole purpose in the universal scheme of things was to grow big enough to topple with a really good, splintering crash. I was forever coming up to trees so precariously and weightily tipped over the path that I would waver, then scoot under, fearing the crush of really unfortunate timing and imagining Katz coming along a few minutes later, regarding my wriggling legs and saying, “Shit, Bryson, what’re you doing under there?” But no trees fell. Everywhere the woods were still and preternaturally quiet. Except for the occasional gurgle of running water and the tiny shuffle of wind-stirred leaves along the forest floor, there was almost never a sound.