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

by Bill Bryson

That’s the trouble with losing your mind; by the time it’s gone, it’s too late to get it back.

What is certain is that Pagliuca had just experienced a surface wind speed of 231 miles an hour. Nothing approaching that velocity has ever been recorded elsewhere.

America was entering the age not just of the automobile but of the retarded attention span.

Moose are so monumentally muddle-headed, in fact, that when they hear a car or truck approaching they will often bolt out of the woods and onto the highway in the curious hope that this will bring them to safety.

The Appalachian Trail is the hardest thing I have ever done, and the Maine portion was the hardest part of the Appalachian Trail, and by a factor I couldn’t begin to compute.

Many of the lakes were immense, and nearly all of them had probably never felt so much as a human toe. There was a certain captivating sense of having penetrated into a secret corner of the world, but in the murderous sun it was impossible to linger.

“It’s kind of hard for me sometimes,” he went on. “I try, Bryson, I really do, but—” He stopped there and shrugged reflectively, a little helplessly. “There’s just this kind of hole in my life where drinking used to be.”

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.

It is a truly astounding sight when every tree in a forest becomes individual; where formerly had sprawled a seamless cloak of green there now stood a million bright colors.

I don’t recall a moment in my life when I was more acutely aware of how providence has favored the land to which I was born. It seemed a perfect place to stop.

I gained a profound respect for wilderness and nature and the benign dark power of woods. I understand now, in a way I never did before, the colossal scale of the world. I found patience and fortitude that I didn’t know I had. I discovered an America that millions of people scarcely know exists. I made a friend. I came home.