A Walk in the Woods

Bill Bryson

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1998

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-6

Chapters 7-8

Chapters 9-10

Chapters 11-12

Chapters 13-14

Chapters 15-16

Chapters 17-18

Chapters 19-21

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 13-14Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 13 Summary

Bryson explains that the first part of their adventure is now over. They hike 18 miles to Front Royal, Virginia, where Bryson’s wife is due to pick them up in two days. Bryson points out that he’s planning to do a book tour over the summer, and Katz has a construction job offer for the summer back in Des Moines, Iowa. However, Bryson notes that the two have agreed to meet again in August to hike the famous Hundred Mile Wilderness section of the AT in Maine. Back in New Hampshire, Bryson begins itching to hike again, so he goes for a series of day hikes but admits that it doesn’t feel right. As he plans to get back on the AT, to at least attempt to complete it, he realizes that it simply won’t be possible for him to do it in one season. Instead, he decides to drive his car to a location, hike a portion of the AT, and then return to his car and repeat the process in another location. His first stop is Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, which happens to be the headquarters of the Appalachian Trail Conference.

Chapter 14 Summary

The following day, Bryson drives to Pennsylvania, where the AT “runs for 230 miles in a northeasterly arc across the state, like the broad end of a slice of pie” (247). He explains that the Pennsylvania section of the AT is unpopular with hikers for numerous reasons, primarily because the terrain is rockier and difficult to hike. One of his first stops in the state is Pine Grove Furnace State Park in the Michaux State Forest, which is not only marked as the midpoint of the AT but is also notorious as the site of one of the trail’s documented murders. Realizing that his new drive-and-hike plan had caused him to lose “[his] momentum, [his] feeling of purpose” (254), Bryson spends the night near Harrisburg and continues to drive north the following day (254).

Unable to find a satisfying portion of the trail to hike, Bryson continues to drive and begins to notice that he has entered the state’s anthracite region, including the infamous and empty town of Centralia, where an underground coal fire has burned since 1962: “Eastern Pennsylvania sits on one of the richest coal beds on earth” (255). Throughout the second half of the chapter, Bryson discusses the state’s history as it relates to the oil and coal industries and their environmental impact. He then stops at another site where environmental devastation has taken place because of zinc mining. While investigating the damage, he’s confronted by a security guard who attempts to detain him and have his car impounded but is finally allowed to travel on when a higher-ranking guard helps him. Bryson laments that he spent four days in Pennsylvania and only hiked 11 miles (270). He identifies the trouble with trying to hike the AT in this fashion: “It was designed for pushing on, ever on, not for dipping in and out of” (270).

Chapters 13-14 Analysis

Chapter 13 begins Part 2 of the book, as Bryson and Katz part ways to take a summer break from the trail, planning to pick up again two months later to hike the Maine portion of the AT. They hike to Front Royal, Virginia, where Bryson’s wife picks them up so that they both can briefly return to civilization. From this point until the end of the summer when Katz rejoins Bryson, the narrative takes on a new character as Bryson begins to hike alone and examine the theme of Isolation and Companionship more strongly. He begins taking some day hikes close to his home in New Hampshire but admits that it doesn’t feel right without Katz, without a full pack, and coming back home the same day. Because these day hikes are unfulfilling, Bryson decides that he needs to commit more by traveling further from home and decides to drive to a spot near the AT, hike into the hills and back to the car, and repeat the process the next day in a different location. His first stop is Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia.

Bryson drives to Pennsylvania the next day, admitting that he “never met a hiker with a good word to say about the trail in Pennsylvania” (247) because it contains mile after mile of jagged rocks. He settles on finding the AT at Pine Grove Furnace State Park in Michaux State Forest, where a sign announces that it’s the AT’s midpoint. Bryson’s retreat to the isolation of the wilderness remains unfulfilling, however. He notes that “[he] couldn’t help feeling a kind of helpless and dispiriting pointlessness in what [he] was doing” (253). He adds that while he knew for some time that he wasn’t going to hike the whole AT, the futility of his hike-by-car plan was becoming clear. Perhaps more than at any other point in the book, Bryson touches on the destructive forces of industrialization in the modernizing world as he visits Centralia, “the strangest, saddest town [he] believes [he] has ever seen” (255).