A Walk in the Woods

by

Bill Bryson

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Chapter 1 Quotes

Who could say the words “Great Smoky Mountains” or “Shenandoah Valley” and not feel an urge, as the naturalist John Muir once put it, to “throw a loaf of bread and a pound of tea in an old sack and jump over the back fence?”

Related Characters: Bill Bryson (speaker)
Page Number: 3
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

Through long winter nights in New Hampshire, while snow piled up outdoors and my wife slumbered peacefully beside me, I lay saucer-eyed in bed reading clinically precise accounts of people gnawed pulpy in their sleeping bags, plucked whimpering from trees, even noiselessly stalked (I didn't know this happened!) as they sauntered unawares down leafy paths or cooled their feet in mountain streams.

Related Characters: Bill Bryson (speaker)
Related Symbols: Bears
Page Number: 20
Explanation and Analysis:

I still have my appendix, and any number of other organs that might burst or sputter in the empty wilds. What would I do then? What if I fell from a ledge and broke my back? What if I lost the trail in blizzard or fog, or was nipped by a venomous snake, or lost my footing on moss-slickened rocks crossing a stream and cracked my head a concussive blow? You could drown in three inches of water on your own. You could die from a twisted ankle. No, I didn't like the feel of this at all.

Related Characters: Bill Bryson (speaker), Stephen Katz
Page Number: 27
Explanation and Analysis:

“It’ll be hell.”

Related Characters: Bryson’s wife (speaker), Bill Bryson, Stephen Katz
Page Number: 30
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

“I, oh…I threw out the filter papers.”

I gave a sound that wasn't quite a laugh. “They couldn't have weighed two ounces.”

“I know, but they were great for throwing. Fluttered all over.” He dribbled on more water. “The toilet paper seems to be working OK, though.”

Related Characters: Stephen Katz (speaker), Bill Bryson
Page Number: 30
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

Woods choke off views and leave you muddled without bearings.

Related Characters: Bill Bryson (speaker), Stephen Katz
Page Number: 62
Explanation and Analysis:

The inestimably priggish and tiresome Henry David Thoreau thought nature was splendid, splendid indeed, so long as he could stroll to town for cakes and barley wine, but when he experienced real wilderness, on a visit to Katahdin in 1846, he was unnerved to the core.

Related Characters: Bill Bryson (speaker), Stephen Katz, Henry David Thoreau
Page Number: 63
Explanation and Analysis:

In fact, mostly what the Forest Service does is build roads. I am not kidding.

Related Characters: Bill Bryson (speaker), Stephen Katz
Page Number: 66
Explanation and Analysis:

You become part of an informal clump, a loose and sympathetic affiliation of people from different age groups and walks of life but all experiencing the same weather, same discomforts, same landscapes, same eccentric impulse to hike to Maine.

Related Characters: Bill Bryson (speaker), Stephen Katz
Page Number: 71
Explanation and Analysis:

We seemed to be looking out for each other. It was very nice. I can put it no other way.

Related Characters: Bill Bryson (speaker), Stephen Katz
Page Number: 71
Explanation and Analysis:

“You're too fat. You should have lost weight before you came out here. Shoulda done some training, ‘cause you could have like a serious, you know, heart thing out here.”

Related Characters: Mary Ellen (speaker), Bill Bryson, Stephen Katz
Page Number: 75
Explanation and Analysis:

I was beginning to appreciate that the central feature of life on the Appalachian Trail is deprivation, that the whole point of the experience is to remove yourself so thoroughly from the conveniences of everyday life that the most ordinary things—processed cheese, a can of pop gorgeously beaded with condensation—fill you with wonder and gratitude.

Related Characters: Bill Bryson (speaker), Stephen Katz, Justin , Peggy
Page Number: 75
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

Planetary scale is your little secret.

Related Characters: Bill Bryson (speaker), Stephen Katz
Page Number: 100
Explanation and Analysis:

These are, in short, seriously inadequate maps. In normal circumstances, this is merely irksome. Now, in a blizzard, it seemed closer to negligence.

Related Characters: Bill Bryson (speaker), Stephen Katz
Related Symbols: Bears
Page Number: 105
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

For the Smokies are a very Eden.

Related Characters: Bill Bryson (speaker), Stephen Katz
Page Number: 127
Explanation and Analysis:

We slopped up to the summit of Clingman’s Dome—a high point of the trip, by all accounts, with views in clear weather to make the heart take wing-and saw nothing, nothing whatever but the dim shapes of dying trees in a sea of swirling fog.

Related Characters: Bill Bryson (speaker), Stephen Katz
Page Number: 143
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

By 1987, Gatlinburg had sixty motels and 200 gift shops. Today it has 100 motels and 400 gift shops. And the remarkable thing is that there is nothing remotely remarkable about that.

Related Characters: Bill Bryson (speaker), Stephen Katz
Page Number: 148
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Chapter 9 Quotes

“Jeez, it's ugly[.]”

Related Characters: Stephen Katz (speaker), Bill Bryson
Page Number: 164
Explanation and Analysis:

It was horrible. And then lavishly, in unison, we wet ourselves.

Related Characters: Stephen Katz (speaker), Bill Bryson
Page Number: 164
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10 Quotes

The Appalachians alone lost four billion trees, a quarter of its cover, in a generation.

Related Characters: Bill Bryson (speaker), Stephen Katz
Page Number: 175
Explanation and Analysis:

If there is one thing the AT teaches, it is low-level ecstasy—something we could all do with more of in our lives.

Related Characters: Bill Bryson (speaker), Stephen Katz
Page Number: 175
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12 Quotes

“Well you know what I’ve got in here, just in case? […] Toenail clippers—because you never know when danger might arise.”

Related Characters: Stephen Katz (speaker), Bill Bryson
Related Symbols: Bears
Page Number: 208
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15 Quotes

We experienced the whole of Luxembourg. Not just its trees.

Related Characters: Bill Bryson (speaker)
Page Number: 286
Explanation and Analysis:

In America, alas, beauty has become something you drive to, and nature an either/or proposition—either you ruthlessly subjugate it, as at Tocks Dam and a million other places, or you deify it, treat it as something holy and remote, a thing apart, along the Appalachian Trail.

Related Characters: Bill Bryson (speaker)
Page Number: 286
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Chapter 19 Quotes

“Now here’s the plan […] We hike and camp like mountain men.”

Related Characters: Stephen Katz (speaker), Bill Bryson
Page Number: 340
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 20 Quotes

“Where you going?” asked the driver.

“Anywhere,” I said. “Anywhere but here.”

Related Characters: Bill Bryson (speaker), Stephen Katz
Page Number: 402
Explanation and Analysis:
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