Quotes from work
A Walk in the Woods

A Walk in the Woods

Bill Bryson

A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail is a 1998 autobiographical book by travel writer Bill Bryson, describing his attempt to walk the Appalachian Trail with his friend "Stephen Katz". The book is written in a humorous style, interspersed with more serious discussions of matters relating to the trail's history, and the surrounding sociology, ecology, trees, plants, animals and people.

“I have long known that it is part of God’s plan for me to spend a little time with each of the most stupid people on earth, and Mary Ellen was proof that even in the Appalachian woods I would not be spared. It became evident from the first moment that she was a rarity.”

Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Source: A Walk in the Woods (1997), Chapter 4 (p. 51)

“I wanted to quit and to do this forever, sleep in a bed and in a tent, see what was over the next hill and never see a hill again. All of this all at once, every moment, on the trail or off.”

Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Source: A Walk in the Woods

“Hunters will tell you that a moose is a wily and ferocious forest creature. Nonsense. A moose is a cow drawn by a three-year-old.”

Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Source: A Walk in the Woods

“That's the trouble with losing your mind; by the time it's gone, it's too late to get it back.”

Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Source: A Walk in the Woods

““Tell me, did they specify ’asshole’ on the job description, or did you take a course?“”

Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Source: A Walk in the Woods (1997), Chapter 14 (p. 187)

“The thing about the Army Corps of Engineers is that they don’t build things very well.”

Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Source: A Walk in the Woods (1997), Chapter 15 (p. 198)

“Now Stonewall Jackson is a man worth taking an interest in. Few people in history have achieved greater fame in a shorter period with less useful activity in the brainbox than Gen. Thomas J. Jackson. (long list of character deficiencies elided)…
His ineradicable fame rests almost entirely on the fact that he had a couple of small but inspiring victories when elsewhere Southern troops were being slaughtered and routed and by dint of having the best nickname any soldier has ever enjoyed.”

Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Source: A Walk in the Woods (1997), Chapter 13 (p. 171)

“In the Smokies, over 90 percent of Fraser firs—a noble tree, unique to the southern Appalachian highlands—are sick or dying, from a combination of acid rain and the depredations of a moth called the balsam woolly adelgid. Ask a park official what they are doing about it and he will say, “We are monitoring the situation closely.””

Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

For this, read: “We are watching them die.”
Source: A Walk in the Woods (1997), Chapter 7 (p. 93)

“If the mattress stains were anything to go by, a previous user had not so much suffered from incontinence as rejoiced in it. He had evidently included the pillow in his celebrations.”

Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Source: A Walk in the Woods (1997), Chapter 6 (p. 81)

“I bought a copy of the Nashville Tennessean out of a metal box, just to see what was happening in the world. The principal story indicated that the state legislature, in one of those moments of enlightenment with which the southern states often strive to distinguish themselves, was in the process of passing a law forbidding schools from teaching evolution. Instead they were to be required to instruct that that the earth was created by God, in seven days, sometime, oh, before the turn of the century. The article reminded us that this was not a new issue in Tennessee. The little town of Dayton—not far from where Katz and I now sat, as it happened—was the scene of the famous Scopes trial in 1925, when the state prosecuted a schoolteacher named John Thomas Scopes for rashly promulgating Darwinian hogwash. As nearly everyone knows, Clarence Darrow, for the defense, roundly humiliated William Jennings Bryan, for the prosecution, but what most people don’t realize is that Darrow lost the case. Scopes was convicted, and the law wasn’t overturned in Tennessee until 1967. And now the state was about to bring the law back, proving conclusively that the danger for Tennesseans isn’t so much that they may be descended from apes as overtaken by them.”

Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Source: A Walk in the Woods (1997), Chapter 8 (pp. 107-108)

“Excuse me, but I just have to say this. You are more stupid than a paramecium.”

Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Source: A Walk in the Woods (1997), Chapter 8 (p. 106)

“America was entering the age not just of the automobile but of the retarded attention span.”

Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Source: A Walk in the Woods (1997), Chapter 18 (p. 234)

““Virginia?” he said, as if I had asked him if there was anywhere local we could get a dose of syphilis.”

Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Source: A Walk in the Woods (1997), Chapter 8 (p. 108)

“Let’s not lose our perspective here. The Smokies achieved their natural splendor without the guidance of a national park service and don’t actually need it now.”

Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Source: A Walk in the Woods (1997), Chapter 7 (p. 94)

“Now here’s a thought to consider. Every twenty minutes on the Appalachian Trail, Katz and I walked farther than the average American does in a week. For 93 percent of all trips outside the home, for whatever distance or whatever purpose, Americans now get in a car. On average the total walking of an American these days—that’s walking of all types: from car to office, from office to car, around the supermarket and shopping malls—adds up to 1.4 miles a week, barely 350 yards a day. That’s ridiculous.”

Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Source: A Walk in the Woods (1997), Chapter 11 (p. 128)

“The Smokies seem to be in the process of losing most of their mussels. The National Park Service actually has something of a tradition of making things extinct. Bryce Canyon National Park is perhaps the most interesting—certainly the most striking—example. It was founded in 1923 and in less than half a century under the Park Service’s stewardship lost seven species of mammal—the white-tailed jackrabbit, prairie dog, pronghorn antelope, flying squirrel, beaver, red fox, and spotted skunk. Quite an achievement when you consider that these animals had survived in Bryce Canyon for tens of millions of years before the Park Service took an interest in them. Altogether, forty-two species of mammal have disappeared from America’s national parks this century.”

Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Source: A Walk in the Woods (1997), Chapter 7 (p. 92)

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