Soon after moving to a small college town in New Hampshire, Bill Bryson stumbled across a mysterious path into the woods at the edge of town. He began to ask around, his curiosity piqued by the name on the sign: The Appalachian Trail. Bryson asked around, and came across a few who had completed or attempted the gruelling hike. He bought a few books on the subject and studied a few maps. A few weeks later, he found himself in the local outfitters store, surrounded by racks of expensive equipment and fit-looking adventurers who were about half of his age. After putting hundreds of dollars worth of equipment on his credit card, the only thing left to do was find a hiking partner. Bryson mentioned his hike in their annual Christmas letter, and wound up with one reply, from his old college buddy, Stephen Katz.
The last time that Bryson had seen his hiking partner-to-be was twenty-five years ago, and at the time Katz was heavily into illicit drugs and alcohol. When the two men were reunited at the airport before leaving on the hike, Bryson immediately noticed the effects of Katz's years of heavy partying. He carried an enormous pot belly, and had developed a condition from taking a contaminated batch of drugs. His condition caused him to experience seizures if he didn't consume food roughly every hour. Needless to say, this was not the ideal partner that Bryson had imagined would be hiking the Appalachian Trail alongside him.
Bryson and Katz start their long journey at Springer Mountain, Georgia. After spending the night in a lodge at the trailhead, they make an early start the next morning. As soon as they take their first step outside, they realize that it wasn't going to be what they had expected. The temperature was eleven degrees farenheit, the coldest ever for March 9 in Georgia. It was the moment that they glanced at the thermometer when Bryson and Katz discovered that they were in over their heads.
Once on their way, the adventuresome pair cover an average of about ten miles per day. The two men gain more and more respect for the hikers who actually complete the trail, because they make the prediction, premature but nevertheless correct, that they will not be completing the entire length of the trail.
Bryson and Katz make it to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, but tired of the crowded path and the monotonous scenery, they decide to skip a portion of the trail and head to Virginia. They hire a cab to take them there, and rejoin the trail in the Blue Mountains at Roanoke, Virginia. They continue hiking through Virginia, until they reach Front Royal, where Bryson's wife picks them up. Katz needs to go back to work, and Bryson is missing his wife and two children back home in New Hampshire. This is the end of their travels together for a little while.
Bryson drives himself to various places on the trail many times during the summer, and day-hikes by himself. He finds that the experience is just not the same withou Katz, and they meet again later in the summer to hike the infamous Hundred-Mile Wilderness in Maine. This long and dense section of woods is famous for its isolation. There is not one store or residence along the entire one-hundred mile length of the trail. Three days into the wilderness, Bryson finds himself separated from Katz for an unusually long period of time. He goes and searches for him, but to no avail. Bryson is forced to spend the night alone, worried sick about his hiking partner. The next day, by a stroke of luck, Bryson comes across Katz, severly disoriented and very dehydrated.
This marks the turning point in their adventure. No longer do they feel the need to complete the whole trail, because they have survived the worst that it could possibly throw at them. After finishing the punishing stretch of one-hundred miles of wilderness, the two men leave the trail for the last time. They are leaner, fitter, and more experienced. After hiking hundreds and hundreds of miles of carrying their own supplies on their backs, Bryson and Katz feel that they can tackle anything that the world has to offer.
