Bill Bryson - A Walk In The Woods

The top of the climb brought several hundred yards of bare, gently sloping granite, like walking along a whale’s back. From each summit the panorama was sensational-for as far as the eye could see nothing but heavy green woods, denim-blue lakes, and lonely, undulant mountains. Many of the lakes were immense, and nearly all of them had probably never felt so much as a human toe. There was a certain captivating sense of having penetrated into a secret corner of the world, but in the murderous sun it was impossible to linger.

Then came a difficult and unnerving descent down a rocky cliff face on the other side, a short walk through a dark, waterless valley, and delivery to the foot of another wall of rock. And so the day went, with monumental climbs and the hope of water over the next hill the principal thing drawing us on. Katz was soon out of water altogether. I gave him a drink of mine and he accepted it gratefully, with a look that asked for a truce. There was, however, still a kind of odor between us, an unhappy sense that things had changed and would not be the same again.

It was my fault. I pushed on farther and longer than we would have normally, and without consulting him, unsubtly punishing him for having unbalanced the equilibrium that had existed between us, and Katz bore it silently as his due. We did fourteen miles, an exceedingly worthy distance in the circumstances, and might have gone farther, but at half past six we came to a broad ford called Wilber Brook and stopped. We were too tired to cross-that is to say, I was too tired-and it would be folly to get wet so near sundown. We made camp and shared our cheerless rations with a kind of strained politeness. Even if we had not been at odds, we would scarcely have spoken: we were too tired. It had been a long day-the hardest of the trip-and the thought that hung over us was that we had eighty-five more miles of this before We got to the camp store at Abol Bridge, 100 miles till we reached the challenging mass of Katahdin.

Even then we had no prospect of real comfort. Katahdin is in Baxter State Park, which takes a certain hearty pride in its devotion to ruggedness and deprivation. There are no restaurants and lodges, no gift shops and hamburger stands, not even any paved roads or public phones. The park itself is in the middle of nowhere, a two-day hike from Millinocket, the nearest town. It could be ten or eleven days before we had a proper meal or slept in a bed. It seemed a long way off.

In the morning we silently forded the stream-we were getting pretty good at it now-and started up the long, slow climb to the roof of the Barren-chairback Range, fifteen miles of ragged summits that we had to cross before descending to a more tranquil spell in the valley of the Pleasant River. The map showed just three tarns in those mountains, remnant glacial ponds, all off the trail, but otherwise no indication of water at all. With less than four liters between us and the day already warm, the long haul between water sources promised to be at the very least uncomfortable.

Barren Mountain was a strenuous slog, much of it straight up and all of it hot, though we seemed to be getting stronger. Even Katz was moving with a comparative lightness. Even so, it took us nearly all morning to hike the four and a half miles up. I reached the top some time ahead of Katz. The summit was sun-warmed granite, hot to the touch, but there was a wisp of breeze-the first in days-and I found a shady spot beneath a disused fire tower. It was the first time in what seemed like weeks that I had sat anywhere in relative comfort. I leaned back and felt as if I could sleep for a month. Katz arrived ten minutes later, puffing hard but pleased to be at the top. He took a seat on a boulder beside mine. I had about two inches of water left, and passed him the bottle. He took a very modest sip and made to hand it back.

“Go on,” I said, “you must be thirsty.”

“Thanks.” He took a slightly less modest sip and put the bottle down. He sat for a minute, then got out a Snickers, broke it in two and extended half to me. It was a somewhat odd thing to do because I had Snickers of my own and he knew that, but he had nothing else to give.

“Thanks,” I said.

He gnawed off a bite of Snickers, ate for a minute and said from out of nowhere: “Girlfriend and boyfriend are talking. The girlfriend says to the boyfriend, ‘Jimmy, how do you spell pedophilia?’ The boyfriend looks at her in amazement. ‘Gosh, honey,’ he says ‘that’s an awfully big word for an eight-year-old.’”

I laughed.

“I’m sorry about the other night,” Katz said.

“Me too.”

“I just got a little…I don’t know.”

“I know.”

“It’s kind of hard for me sometimes,” he went on. “I try, Bryson, I really do, but-” He stopped there and shrugged reflectively, a little helplessly. “There’s just this kind of hole in my life where drinking used to be.” He was staring at the view-the usual verdant infinity of woods and lakes, shimmering slightly in a heat haze. There was something in his gaze-a miles-away fixedness-that made me think for a minute that he had stopped altogether, but he went on. “When I went back to Des Moines after Virginia and got that job building houses, at the end of the day all the crew would go off to this tavern across the street. They’d always invite me, but I’d say”-he lifted two hands and put on a deep, righteous voice-“‘No, boys, I’m reformed.’ And I’d go home to my little apartment and heat a TV dinner, and feel all virtuous, like I’m supposed to. But really, you know, when you do that night after night it’s kind of hard to persuade yourself you’re leading a rich and thrilling existence. I mean, if you had a Fun-o-Meter, the needle wouldn’t exactly be jumping into the orgasmic zone because you’ve got your own TV dinner. You know what I’m saying?”

He glanced over, to see me nod.

“So anyway one day after work, they invited me for about the hundredth time and I thought, ‘Oh, what the hell. No law that says I can’t go in a tavern like anybody else.’ So I went and had a Diet Coke and it was OK. I mean, it was nice just to be out. But you know how good a beer is at the end of a long day. And there was this jerk named Dwayne who kept saying, ‘Go on, have a beer. You know you want one. One little beer’s not gonna hurt ya. You haven’t had a drink for three years. You can handle it.’” He looked at me again. “You know?”

I nodded.

“Caught me when I was vulnerable. You know, when I was still breathing,” Katz said with a thin, ironic smile, then went on: “I never had more than three, I swear to God. I know what you’re going to say-believe me, everybody’s said it already. I know I can’t drink. I know I can’t have just a couple of beers like a normal person, that pretty soon the number will creep up and up and spin out of control. I know that. But-” He stopped there again, shaking his head. “But I love to drink. I can’t help it. I mean, I love it, Bryson-love the taste, love that buzz you get when you’ve had a couple, love the smell and feel of taverns. I miss dirty jokes and the click of pool balls in the background, and that kind of bluish, underlit glow of a bar at night.” He was quiet again for a minute, lost in a little reverie for a lifetime’s drinking. “And I can’t have it anymore. I know that.” He breathed out heavily through his nostrils. “It’s just that. It’s just that sometimes all I see ahead of me is TV dinners-a sort of endless line of them dancing towards me like in a cartoon. You ever eat TV dinners?”

“Not for years and years.”

“Well, they’re shit, believe me. And, I don’t know, it’s just kind of hard …” He trailed off. “Actually, it’s real hard.” He looked at me, on the edge of emotion, his expression frank and humble. “Makes me kind of an asshole sometimes,” he said quietly.