Bill Bryson - A Walk In The Woods

From the moment-the moment-we put our heads down that night there were the scurryings and scamperings of rodents. They were absolutely fearless and ran freely over our bags and even across our heads. Cursing furiously, Katz banged around at them with his water bottle and whatever else came to hand. Once I turned on my headlamp to find a packmouse on top of my sleeping bag, high up on my chest, not six inches from my chin, sitting up on its haunches and regarding me with a gimlet eye. Reflexively, I hit the bag from inside, flipping him into a startled oblivion.

“Got one!” cried Katz.

“Me, too,” I said, rather proudly.

Katz was scrabbling around on his hands and knees, as if trying to pass for a mouse himself, enlivening the dark with a flying flashlight beam and pausing from time to time to hurl a boot or bang down his water bottle. Then he would crawl back in his bag, be still for a time, curse abruptly, fling off encumbrances, and repeat the process. I buried myself in my bag and pulled the drawstring tight over my head. And thus passed the night, with repeated sequences of Katz being violent, followed by silence, followed by scamperings, followed by Katz being violent. I slept surprisingly well, all things considered.

I expected Katz to wake in a foul temper, but in fact he was chipper.

“There’s nothing like a good night’s sleep and that was nothing like a good night’s sleep,” he announced when he stirred, and gave an appreciative guffaw. His happiness, it turned out, was because he had killed seven mice and was feeling very proud-not to say pumped up and gladiatorial. Some fur and a nubbin of something pink and pulpy still adhered to the bottom of his water bottle, I noticed when he raised it to his lips. Occasionally it troubled me (I presume it must trouble all hikers from time to time) just how far one strays from the normal measures of civility on the trail. This was such a moment.

Outside, fog was stealing in, filling the spaces between the trees. It was not an encouraging morning. A drizzle hung in the air when we set off, and before long it had turned into a steady, merciless, deadfall rain.

Rain spoils everything. There is no pleasure in walking in waterproofs. There is something deeply dispiriting about the stiff rustle of nylon and the endless, curiously amplified patter of rain on synthetic material. Worst of all, you don’t even stay dry; the waterproofs keep out the rain but make you sweat so much that soon you are clammily sodden. By afternoon, the trail was a running stream. My boots gave up the will to stay dry. I was soaked through and squelching with every step. It rains up to 120 inches a year in some parts of the Smokies. That’s ten feet. That’s a lot of rain. We had a lot of it now.

We walked 9.7 miles to Spence Field Shelter, a modest distance even for us, but we were wet through and chilled, and anyway it was too far to hike to the next one. The Park Service (why does this seem so inevitable?) imposes a host of petty, inflexible, exasperating rules on AT hikers, among them that you must move smartly forward at all times, never stray from the trail, and camp each night at a shelter. It means effectively not only that you must walk a prescribed distance each day but then spend the night penned up with strangers. We peeled off the worst of our wet clothes and rooted for dry ones in our packs, but even stuff from deep in the pack felt damp. There was a stone fireplace built into the shelter wall, and some kindly soul had left a pile of twigs and small logs by the side. Katz tried to light a fire, but everything was so wet that it wouldn’t burn. Even his matches wouldn’t strike. Katz exhaled in disgust and gave up. I decided to make some coffee, to warm us up, and the stove proved equally temperamental.

As I fiddled with it, there was the singing rustle of nylon from without and two young women entered, blinking and bedraggled. They were from Boston and had hiked in on a side trail from Cades Cove. A minute or two later, four guys on spring break from Wake Forest University came in, then a lone young hiker who proved to be our acquaintance Jonathan, and finally a couple of bearded middle-aged guys. After four or five days in which we had seen scarcely a soul, suddenly we were inundated with company.

Everyone was considerate and friendly, but there was no escaping the conclusion that we were hopelessly overcrowded. It occurred to me, not for the first time, how delightful, how truly delightful, it would be if MacKaye’s original vision had been realized-if the shelters along the trail were proper hostels, with hot showers, individual bunks (with curtains for privacy and reading lights, please), and a resident caretaker/cook to keep a cheery fire dancing in the grate and who would invite us, any minute now, to take our places at a long table for a dinner of stew and dumplings, corn bread, and, oh, let us say, peach cobbler. Outside there would be a porch with rocking chairs, where you could sit and smoke your pipe and watch the sun sink into the lovely distant hills. What bliss it would be. I was perched on the edge of the sleeping platform lost in a little reverie along these lines and absorbed with trying to get a small volume of water to boil-quite happy really-when one of the middle-aged guys drifted over and introduced himself as Bob. I knew with a sinking heart that we were going to talk equipment. I could just see it coming. I hate talking equipment.

“So what made you buy a Gregory pack?” he said.

“Well, I thought it would be easier than carrying everything in my arms.”

He nodded thoughtfully, as if this were an answer worth considering, then said: “I’ve got a Kelty.”

I wanted to say-ached to say-“Well, here’s an idea to try to get hold of, Bob. I don’t remotely give a shit.” But talking equipment is one of those things you just have to do, like chatting to your mother’s friends in the supermarket, so I said: “Oh, yeah? You happy with it?”

“Oh, yeah” was the deeply sincere reply. “Tell you why.” He brought it over to show me its features-its snap pockets, its map pouch, its general miraculous ability to hold contents. He was particularly proud of a dropdown inner stowage pouch, bulging with little plastic bottles of vitamins and medicines, with a transparent window built into it. “It lets you see what you’ve got in there, without having to undo the zipper,” he explained and looked at me with an expression that invited staggered admiration.

Just at that moment Katz stepped up. He was eating a carrot (nobody could cadge food like Katz) and was about to ask me something, but when his eye lit on Bob’s transparent pouch, he said: “Hey, look-a pouch with a window. Is that for people who are so stupid they can’t figure out how to get it open?”

“Actually, it’s a very useful feature,” said Bob in a measured, defensive tone. “It lets you check the contents without having to undo the zipper.”

Katz gave him a genuinely incredulous look. “What-like you’re so busy on the trail you can’t spare the three seconds it takes to open a zipper and looked inside?” He turned to me. “These college kids are willing to trade Pop Tarts for Snickers. What do you think?”

“Well, I actually find it quite useful,” Bob said quietly, to himself, but he took his pack away and bothered us no more. I’m afraid my equipment conversations nearly always ended up like that somehow, with the talker retiring with hurt feelings and a piece of formerly prized equipment cradled to his chest. It was never my wish, believe me.

The Smokies went downhill from there. We walked for four days and the rain fell tirelessly, with an endless, typewriter patter. The trail everywhere became boggy and slick. Puddles filled every dip and trough. Mud became a feature of our lives. We trudged through it, stumbled and fell in it, knelt in it, set our packs down in it, left a streak of it on everything we touched. And always when you moved there was the maddening, monotonous sound of your nylon going wiss, wiss, wiss until you wanted to take a gun and shoot it. I didn’t see a bear, didn’t see a salamander, didn’t see foxfire, didn’t see anything actually-just perpetual dribbles and droplets of rain adhering to my glasses.