Sarah Holt, Post #4

Bryson’s “A Walk in the Woods” ends with him and his partner not completing the full length of the AT. This was foreshadowed, in the beginning chapter one, with Bryson thinking about how it wasn’t going to be so bad when deep down inside he really knew he was wrong. Throughout, Bryson had mindset that the trail was going to be hard. This mental picture was always in the back of his mind. During the tough times, he often thought about how long hiking would be. With that negative statement in his head it was very hard to complete the whole thing.

From the start Bryson was thinking of the length of the trip and how hard it was truly going to be. But soon after getting started the trip turned into a long tedious walk. After getting to the top of Clingman’s Dome, Katz and Bryson decided that they must go to Gatlinburg; this was their first big adventure back to civilization. It was here that they realized how hard the trip was going to be. While shopping for bootlaces, Bryson saw a full length map of the trail (4 feet total) and discovered that they only had covered 2 inches. At this point they both realized they weren’t going to walk to Maine. The map provided a scale of how extensive the trail truly was. The mental picture of the trip was a very long, hard walk; even more than they had already done. In chapter 9, Bryson wrote about some of the people who walked all the way to Maine and how it took a special person to make the whole trip. However, another way they could hike the trail would be to do it in sections. Because “The Appalachian Trail Conference doesn’t recognize speed records,” Bryson and Katz can complete the trail as they wish; if over the next 5 years or even 50 years.

Bryson and Katz discovered that though they had walked half a million steps, they didn’t need to walk the other 4.5 million to get the gist of hiking the whole Appalachian Trail. Bryson was thinking about how long of a trail it was and how long it would take. I believe that hiking the trail was all mental. Anyone can do it; they have to have the mind set that they are going to complete the trail during the duration of the experience-not just at some parts.