by digbyg » Sun 09 Jul, 2017 7:10 pm
I read walk in the woods both before and after completing the AT. Before doing the hike, I felt that Bryson just gave a humorous account of his own bumbling approach to the hike and the people, his sarcasm often misapplied and rude. That is the style that has served him well in many other books, and he deliberately offends the locals as much as he entertains them.
After the hike I was amazed at how well he had encapsulated the feelings of the through hiker despite his own short term involvement. He saw the trivial things, like condensation trickling down the fridge door, that entranced through hikers because of the novelty and the attached meaning, in that case, an energy kick from a soda. It is certainly not an intellectual study of hiking, and he never intended to do the whole thing, but he certainly nailed many of my memories.