In the summer of 2010, I read ”A short history of nearly everything” by Bill Bryson. I really enjoyed his eloquent combination of humor and science, but haven’t read anything else by him since. But, as it happens, I found myself holding a copy of his ”A walk in the woods” in Accra in December, and thought: This I’ve got to read when I get home. Said and done. I got home. I borrowed it from the library. And now I’ve read it.
It is Bryson’s very personal story of how he tried to hike the Appalachian Trail in eastern United States, mixed with anecdotes from the trail’s history and descriptions of the surrounding ecology, the US National Park system and other relevant information. It is funny and informative and very much what I wish I was capable of producing.
And it has filled me with irrational longing to the Appalachians. It doesn’t really make sense, because the way he tells it, the Appalachian Trail is a complete pain. But there is something about the deep forests. A lusciousness, a deep green that they get in temperate rainforests that our cold, Lutheran coniferous forests can’t muster here in Sweden. I got a taste of it on Vancouver Island and the Olympic National Park in 2012, but now I want more, and I just feel like hiking a part of the Appalachian Trail would be the best way to drench this thirst.
I don’t see when it’ll happen, though. Maybe the longing will pass. Or it will internalize, mingle with my other longings. A dream to be fulfilled in an undefined future. A walk in the woods.
Katja Malmborg 