Bill Bryson - A Walk In The Woods

Fashion was moving on. American vacationers were discovering the seaside. The White Mountain hotels were a little too dull, a little too remote and expensive, for modern tastes. Worse, they had begun to attract the wrong sort of people-parvenus from Boston and New York. Finally, and above all, there was the automobile. The hotels were built on the assumption that visitors would come for two weeks at least, but the car gave them a fickle mobility. In the 1924 edition of New England Highways and Byways from a Motor Car, the author gushed about the unrivaled splendor of the White Mountains-the tumbling cataracts of Franconia, the alabaster might of Washington, the secret charm of little towns like Lincoln and Bethlehem-and strongly encouraged visitors to give the mountains a full day and night. America was entering the age not just of the automobile but of the retarded attention span.

One by one the hotels closed down, became derelict, or, more often, burned to the ground (often, miraculously, almost the only thing to survive was the insurance policy), and their grounds slowly returned to forest. Once one could have seen perhaps twenty large hotels from the summit. Today there is just one, the Mount Washington, still imposing and festive with its perky red roof but inescapably forlorn in its solitary grandeur. (And even it has staggered along the edge of bankruptcy from time to time.) Elsewhere across the spacious valley far below, where once had proudly stood the Fabyan, the Mount Pleasant, the Crawford House, and many others, today there were only forest, highways, and motels.

From beginning to end the great age of the resort hotels in the White Mountains lasted just fifty years. Once again, I offer you the Appalachian Trail as a symbol of venerability. And with that in mind, I went off to find my friend Bill and complete our walk.

“I’ve had a brilliant idea,” said Stephen Katz. We were in the living room of my house in Hanover. It was two weeks later. We were leaving for Maine in the morning.

“Oh yeah?” I said, trying not to sound too wary, for ideas are not Katz’s strongest suit.

“You know how awful it is carrying a full pack?”

I nodded. Of course I did.

“Well, I was thinking about it the other day. In fact I’ve been thinking about it a lot because to tell you the truth, Bryson, the idea of putting that pack on again filled me with”-he lowered his voice a tone-“fucking dread.” He nodded with solemnity and repeated the two key words. “And then I had a great idea. An alternative. Close your eyes.”

“What for?”

“I want to surprise you.”

I hate having to close my eyes for a surprise, always have, but I did it.

I could hear him rooting in his army surplus duffel bag. “‘Who carries a lot of weight all the time?’” he continued. “That was the question I asked myself. ‘Who carries a lot of weight day in and day out?’ Hey, don’t look yet. And then it occurred to me.” He was silent a moment, as if making some crucial adjustment that would assure a perfect impression. “OK, now you can look.”

I uncovered my eyes. Katz, beaming immoderately, was wearing a Des Moines Register newspaper delivery bag-the kind of bright yellow pouch that paperboys traditionally sling over their shoulders before climbing on their bikes and riding off to do their rounds.

“You can’t be serious,” I said quietly.

“Never been more serious in my life, my old mountain friend. I brought you one too.” He handed me one from his duffel bag, still pristinely folded and in a transparent wrapper.

“Stephen, you can’t walk across the Maine wilderness with a newspaper delivery bag.”

“Why not? It’s comfortable, it’s capacious, it’s waterproof-near enough-and it weighs all of about four ounces. It is the Perfect Hiking Accessory. Let me ask you this. When was the last time you saw a paperboy with a hernia?” He gave a small, smug nod, as if he had stumped me with that one.

I made some tentative, preparatory shapes with my mouth prior to saying something, but Katz raced on before I could get a thought in order.

“Now here’s the plan,” he continued. “We cut our load down to the bare minimum-no stoves, no gas bottles, no noodles, no coffee, no tents, no stuff sacks, no sleeping bags. We hike and camp like mountain men. Did Daniel Boone have a three-season fiberfill sleeping bag? I don’t think so. All we take is cold food, water bottles, maybe one change of clothes. I figure we can get the load down to five pounds. And”-he waggled his hand delightedly in the empty newspaper bag-“we put it all in here.” His expression begged me to drape him with plaudits.

“Have you given any thought to how ridiculous you would look?”

“Yup. Don’t care.”

“Have you considered what a source of uncontained mirth you would be to every person you met between here and Katahdin?”

“Don’t give the tiniest shit.”

“Well, has it occurred to you what a ranger would say if he found you setting off into the Hundred Mile Wilderness with a newspaper delivery bag? Do you know they have the power to detain anyone they think is not mentally or physically fit?” This Was actually a lie, but it brought a promising hint of frown to his brow. “Also, has it occurred to you that maybe the reason paperboys don’t get hernias is that they only carry the bag for an hour or so a day-that maybe it might not be so comfortable lugging it for ten hours at a stretch over mountains-that maybe it would bang endlessly against your legs and rub your shoulders raw? Look how it’s chafing against your neck already.”

His eyes slid stealthily down to the strap. The one positive thing about Katz and his notions was that it was never very hard to talk him out of them. He took the bag off over his head. “OK,” he agreed, “screw the bags. But we pack light.”

I was happy with that. In fact, it seemed a perfectly sensible proposal. We packed more than Katz wanted-I insisted on sleeping bags, warm clothes, and our tents on the grounds that this could be a good deal more demanding than Katz appreciated-but I agreed to leave behind the stove, gas bottles, and pots and pans. We would eat cold stuff-principally Snickers, raisins, and an indestructible type of salami product called Slim Jims. It wouldn’t kill us for a fortnight. Besides, I couldn’t face another bowl of noodles. Altogether we saved perhaps five pounds of weight each-hardly anything really-but Katz seemed disproportionately happy. It wasn’t often he got his way, even in part.

And so the next day, my wife drove us deep into the boundless woods of northern Maine for our trek through the Hundred Mile Wilderness. Maine is deceptive. It is the twelfth smallest state, but it has more uninhabited forest-ten million acres-than any other state but Alaska. In photographs it looks serene and beckoning, parklike even, with hundreds of cool, deep lakes and hazy, tranquil miles of undulating mountains. Only Katahdin, with its rocky upper slopes and startling muscularity, offers anything that looks faintly intimidating. In fact, it is all hard.

The trail maintainers in Maine have a certain hale devotion to seeking out the rockiest climbs and most forbidding slopes, and of these Maine has a breathtaking plenitude. In its 283 miles, the Appalachian Trail in Maine presents the northbound hiker with almost 100,000 feet of climb, the equivalent of three Everests. And at the heart of it all lies the famous Hundred Mile Wilderness-99.7 miles of boreal forest trail without a store, house, telephone, or paved road, running from the village of Monson to a public campground at Abol Bridge, a few miles below Katahdin. It is the remotest section of the entire AT. If something goes wrong in the Hundred Mile Wilderness, you are on your own. You could die of an infected blood blister out there.