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

by Bill Bryson

Life takes on a neat simplicity, too. Time ceases to have any meaning. When it is dark, you go to bed, and when it is light again you get up, and everything in between is just in between. It’s quite wonderful, really.

Reminds me of my time in the Shenandoah Valley. When it was dark, I slept. When it was light, I woke up. Some of the best sleep of my life.

the spice bush,

AHHH! So many memories of the spice bush. One of the only things that can start a fire on a soaking day. Walking through the woods and teaching the kids about it was one of my favorite things.

Hardees sausage biscuits. Shenandoah National Park is a park with problems. More even than the Smokies, it suffers from a chronic shortage (though a cynic might say a chronic misapplication) of funds. Several miles of side trails have been closed, and others are deteriorating.

anthracnose

fearless and casually returned to their browsing when I had passed. Sixty years ago, there were no deer in this neck of the Blue Ridge Mountains. They had been hunted out of existence. Then, after the park was created in 1936, thirteen white-tailed deer were introduced, and, with no one to hunt them and few predators, they thrived.

Boy are there deer now! This past summer I saw the most deer in Shenandoah Valley than I had ever seen anywhere in my life. I loved watching the mothers and babies together.

If it is a bear and it comes for you, what are you going to do—give it a pedicure?”