Bryson, Bill. A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail. New York: Random House LLC, 2006.
The longest continuous footpath in the world, the Appalachian Trail stretches along the East Coast of the United States, from Georgia to Maine, through some of the most arresting and celebrated landscapes in America.
In A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail Bill Bryson funnily introduces the history and ecology of the Appalachian Trail: at the age of forty-four, in the company of his friend Stephen Katz, Bryson set off to hike through the vast tangled woods which have been frightening sensible people for three hundred years. Ahead lay almost 2,200 miles of remote mountain wilderness filled with bears, moose, bobcats, rattlesnakes, poisonous plants, disease-bearing tics, the occasional chuckling murderer and—perhaps most alarming of all—people whose favourite pasttime is discussing the relative merits of the external-frame backpack.
Facing savage weather, merciless insects, unreliable maps, and a fickle companion whose profoundest wish was to go to a motel and watch The X-Files, Bryson gamely struggled through the wilderness to achieve a lifetime’s ambition—not to die outdoors. (Text adapted from Bill Bryson’s homepage.)