A Walk in the Woods

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1998

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-6

Chapters 7-8

Chapters 9-10

Chapters 11-12

Chapters 13-14

Chapters 15-16

Chapters 17-18

Chapters 19-21

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Themes

Wilderness and Civilization

The overarching theme running throughout A Walk in the Woods is the interplay and contrasts between wilderness and civilization. This thematic element, as Bryson explores it, isn’t one of comparison but rather how both exist as the recurring worlds that Bill Bryson and Stephen Katz alternately inhabit as they attempt to hike the Appalachian Trail. The exploration focuses on how Bryson and Katz transition from one world to the other. This is the case primarily because they hike and camp portions of the trail, sometimes for weeks at a time in the wilderness, but at various intervals throughout their adventure always return to civilization, sometimes only for a single night. Hiking and camping day after day until reaching civilization in the form of a nearby town with a motel, restaurant, and laundry facilities is a process that repeats itself over and over throughout the first half of the book. Part 2, however, takes on a different type of examination because Bryson is now hiking alone and typically does so by driving to various AT locations to hike and then moving on to another or, when he’s near his home, by doing a series of day hikes and returning home every day.

After a week of hiking in Northern Georgia, Bryson and Katz decide to find the highway and catch a ride to the town of Hiawassee, where they can sleep in a bed for a night. When they step onto the shoulder of the highway, Bryson remarks that seeing the highway and a drive in the distance was “a hint of civilization” (85). After a blizzard in the Smoky Mountains forces refuge in the tourist town of Gatlinburg, which Bryson refers to as a “shock to the system” (145), they decide to skip a large portion of the trail by renting a car and driving to Virginia. Bryson and Katz are dazed by the transition to a world of busy streets:

It’s such a strange contrast. When you’re on the AT, the forest is your universe, infinite and entire. It is all you experience day after day. Eventually it is about all you can imagine. You are aware, of course, that somewhere over the horizon there are mighty cities, busy factories, crowded freeways, but here in this part of the country, where woods drape the landscape for as far as the eye can see, the forest rules (163).

This emphasizes how they’ve become acclimated to the serenity of nature after many days on the trail and begin to view urban life as unnatural and irritating. In contrast, toward the beginning of their trek, the draw of urban life is far stronger. When Bryson begins to do day hikes closer to his home, the draw of urban life becomes even more compelling because it represents the love of his family and the comfort of being in familiar surroundings.

Isolation and Companionship

Another major theme in A Walk in the Woods is the juxtaposition between isolation and companionship. Bryson’s examination of these opposing forces deals not only with the interpersonal dynamics between the two primary figures but also with individual feelings and thoughts concerning the different types of solitude. While companionship is clear in its meaning, isolation instead considers both the joint solitude that Bryson and Katz share when they’re trekking together and the traditional notion of simply being alone, as when Bryson does day hikes alone. Near the beginning of the narrative, it becomes clear that Bryson’s need for companionship results from his fear of the inherent danger of the wilderness. This aspect begins to seem like a selfish notion when Katz calls to ask if he can come along and Bryson is overjoyed and dances “a little jig” only because “[he] wasn’t going to have to walk alone” (28). The notion becomes even clearer when Bryson and his wife meet Katz at the airport and Bryson immediately notices that he’s limping and “was arrestingly larger than when I had last seen him” (32).

Despite Bryson’s reservations about Katz’s fitness for the hike, he does well and settles into a pattern of hiking far behind Bryson, so that they’re both moving in isolation but always eventually catching up. Another aspect of isolation and companionship is that when Bryson and Katz hike in the early chapters, they typically have minimal interaction with other hikers, even though plenty are always ahead of them and behind them. However, almost every camp night they spend at one of the AT’s shelters entails meeting other hikers, bonding with them, and frequently set out the next day hiking with them. Hikers on the trail often form something of an informal community, but they know that these relationships are usually fleeting. In Part 2 of the book, after Bryson and Katz take their planned summer break, Bryson continues to hike but does so by driving to locations near his home. He’s struck by the fact that it “didn’t feel right without Katz, without a full pack” (234). Bryson admits that he wasn’t prepared for the second half of his adventure and where he would be at this point. He remarks, “Where I was, in fact, was companionless, far away from where I had gotten off the trail” (234). Fortunately, he finds a new companion in his neighbor for some of his day hikes and later meets up with Katz again as planned to attempt to complete the northernmost section of the AT.

The History of the Appalachian Trail

Yet another primary theme throughout A Walk in the Woods concerns the history of the AT. In Chapter 1, Bryson provides a general overview of the trail, pointing out that it runs more than 2,100 miles along America’s eastern seaboard, across 14 states from Georgia to Maine. He provides more specific details concerning the trail’s history at several other points in the book. For example, in Chapter 3, just as Bryson and Katz make their way to Springer Mountain (the southernmost starting point of the trail), Bryson shares an extensive description of the original vision for the trail as well as its actual construction. According to Bryson, Benton MacKaye, a former employee of the National Forest Service and the US Labor Department, unveiled his plan for a long-distance hiking trail in 1921. MacKaye envisioned the trail as a “thread connecting a network of mountaintop work camps” (39). He saw it as “a retreat from profit” that would contain hostels, seasonal study centers, and even self-owning communities centering on forestry, farming, and crafts.

Bryson explains that while “MacKaye always gets the credit for the trail” (40), a Washington admiralty lawyer and avid hiker named Myron Avery took over the development of the project and was instrumental in actually constructing it. The two men had a falling-out in 1935 over the building of a scenic highway in Shenandoah National Park, and they never spoke again. In Chapter 9, Bryson details some of the most famous hikers of the trail. These individuals include Earl V. Shaffer, who in 1948 returned from the army and “became the first person to hike the Appalachian Trail from end to end in a single summer” (157). Bryson explains that Shaffer completed the hike in 123 days without the use of a tent, just as Myron Avery was opining that an end-to-end hike was likely impossible. According to Bryson, in the half century after Shaffer’s hike, “about 4,000 others have repeated the feat” (160). Among these, the most inspirational include Bill Irwin, a man with blindness, in 1990 completed it with a service dog, and Emma “Grandma” Gatewood, “who successfully hiked the trail twice in her late sixties despite being eccentric, poorly equipped, and a danger to herself” (161).

In addition, Bryson periodically steps outside his trek narrative to explore relevant subjects that augment and inform it. These well-researched passages, which highlight his inquisitive mind and writing ability, include subjects as diverse as US history, wildlife, botany, geology, conservation, geography, tourism, and the ecological effects of human industry on the AT and surrounding areas.