Book vanity: A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

A walk through my Whistler camping adventures with the company of Bill Bryson. (Written November 2023).

This review has something of a personal spin to it. I have spent the last week camping (okay, car-camping) in British Columbia, Canada, and happened to be reading one of Bill Bryon's lesser-appreciated adventures, A Walk in the Woods. The mornings of getting dressed in the frozen and cramped conditions of a 4x4 somewhere up a service road in the mountains of Whistler gave me deep empathy for old Bill, who would wake to far colder and more exposed conditions in a grotty "hut" in the Appalachian mountains. As I fiddled with the attachment on my gas canister without feeling in my fingers in a bleary-eyed attempt to get some coffee boiling, so did Bill and his begrudging friend, Kaz, on the morning of a snow blizzard before they set off walking through three-foot snow.

Granted, I did not have to set up and break down camp each day and night, and waking up under two duvets next to a warm body in a car falls more under a "glamping" category, at least more so than Bill's. His nights involved three-walled shelters with cement sleeping platforms, thoughtlessly decorated with previous walkers' rubbish and worse, all while being exposed to the elements and wildlife.

We chose to do one big-ish hike on one of the days during our trip, and drove from mountain range to ski town as we so pleased. We did not, unlike Bill, have to walk nine kilometres to a highway and stick out our thumbs in order to reach the nearest town with a Trainspotting-esque motel and a warm dribbly shower. I felt endlessly grateful that, when we needed to wash and recuperate, we paid $9 each to use the showers, sauna and hot tub at Whistler's local leisure centre. I swear I have never been more besotted with a shower that requires you to press a button every 20 seconds and pump-soap that could strip a prison of sexual infections.

Bryson's familiar wit - the droll conversations about camping gear, his comical walking companion, Kaz, and his pining for intimacy - buoys the reader through his otherwise miserable experience of walking the Appalachian trail. The discomforts that he pushes through are challenged and ever-changing, and I'll admit the point at which my own stamina for the narrative began to dwindle mirrored the point at which he returns to the trail without his peculiar sidekick. Not only is the comic relief stripped from the text, but the reason behind Bryson's adventure is increasingly less clear both to the reader and himself. As he wanders aimlessly along 8-hour stretches of the trail in stints between motels, I find myself discouraged and disappointed in my trusty narrator's adventure, whose existential reassurance had until that point encouraged me that, against all odds, the hard work and endless plodding is worth it in the end.

Nevertheless, as my first Bryson book (I know), I was endlessly impressed with the depth, care, extensive research, and persistent positivity with which he takes us on his Appalachian adventure. It's possible that my narcissistic tendencies made his experience feel ever so slightly akin to my own, as I sat beneath a dripping tree in a boggy rainforest attempting to dry my boots on a smoking fire. The book probably won't make you want to walk the Appalachian trail (not one bit), but it might make you a little more appreciative of some company the next time you are walking with an old friend.