Salon Wanderlust | A walk in the woods

[Salon Wanderlust: Travel with a passion]

A L S O +T O D A Y

A talk with Bill Bryson
By Don George
On writing, hiking and other arduous pleasures

T A B L E_T A L K
Visiting Bankok? Travelers discuss places to go, people to see in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk

R E C E N T L Y

Student protests bloom
By Rolf Potts
Spring is here -- time to put on the riot gear!
(05/19/98)
The tomb of the unknown soldier
By Roxanne Nelson
An unforgettable encounter in southern France
(05/18/98)
Mondo Weirdo
Tales of Koh Samui
Readers' adventures on Thailand's fabled -- or is it just mislabeled? -- island
(05/15/98)
Don't go there
By Tim Barrett
Way off the beaten track in Mexico
(05/14/98)
There'll always be a London
By Douglas Cruickshank
A wandering wonderer ponders the passions of collectors and cabbies
(05/13/98)

Browse the
Wanderlust Passages archives

__A WALK IN THE WOODS .|. PAGE 2 OF 2
We hiked through deep-seeming woods, along gloriously untaxing terrain, climbing a gentle 500 feet in four miles. In the Smokies, you can climb 500 feet in, well, about 500 feet. This was more like it. The weather was kindly, and there was a real sense of spring being on the turn. And there was life everywhere -- zumming insects, squirrels scampering along boughs, birds twittering and hopping about, spider webs gleaming silver in the sun. Twice I flushed grouse, always a terrifying experience: an instantaneous explosion from the undergrowth at your feet, like balled socks fired from a gun, followed by drifting feathers and a lingering residue of fussy, bitching noise. I saw an owl, which watched me imperturbably from a nearby stout limb, and loads of deer, which raised their heads to stare but otherwise seemed fearless and casually returned to their browsing when I had passed. Sixty years ago, there were no deer in this neck of the Blue Ridge Mountains. They had been hunted out of existence. Then, after the park was created in 1936, thirteen white-tailed deer were introduced, and, with no one to hunt them and few predators, they thrived. Today there are 5,000 deer in the park, all descended from those original thirteen or others that migrated from nearby.
Surprisingly, considering its modest dimensions and how little room there is for real backcountry, the park is remarkably rich in wildlife. Bobcats, bears, red and gray foxes, beaver, skunks, raccoons, flying squirrels, and our friends the salamanders exist in admirable numbers, though you don't often see them, as most are nocturnal or wary of people. Shenandoah is said to have the highest density of black bears anywhere in the world -- slightly over one per square mile. There have even been reported sightings (including by park rangers, who perhaps ought to know better) of mountain lions, even though mountain lions haven't been confirmed in the eastern woods for almost seventy years. There is the tiniest chance that they may exist in pockets in the northern woods (we shall get to that in due course, and I think you'll be glad you waited) but not in an area as small and hemmed in as Shenandoah National Park.
We didn't see anything terribly exotic, or even remotely exotic, but it was nice just to see squirrels and deer, to feel that the forest was lived in. Late in the afternoon, I rounded a bend to find a wild turkey and her chicks crossing the trail ahead of me. The mother was regal and unflappable; her chicks were much too busy falling over and getting up again even to notice me. This was the way the woods were supposed to be. I couldn't have been more delighted.
We hiked till five and camped beside a tranquil spring in a small, grassy clearing in the trees just off the trail. Because it was our first day back on the trail, we were flush for food, including perishables like cheese and bread that had to be eaten before they went off or were shaken to bits in our packs, so we rather gorged ourselves, then sat around smoking and chatting idly until persistent and numerous midgelike creatures (no-see-ums, as they are universally known along the trail) drove us into our tents. It was perfect sleeping weather, cool enough to need a bag but warm enough that you could sleep in your underwear, and I was looking forward to a long night's snooze -- indeed was enjoying a long night's snooze -- when, at some indeterminate dark hour, there was a sound nearby that made my eyes fly open. Normally, I slept through everything -- through thunderstorms, through Katz's snoring and noisy midnight pees -- so something big enough or distinctive enough to wake me was unusual. There was a sound of undergrowth being disturbed -- a click of breaking branches, a weighty pushing through low foliage -- and then a kind of large, vaguely irritable snuffling noise.
Bear!
I sat bolt upright. Instantly every neuron in my brain was awake and dashing around frantically, like ants when you disturb their nest. I reached instinctively for my knife, then realized I had left it in my pack, just outside the tent. Nocturnal defense had ceased to be a concern after many successive nights of tranquil woodland repose. There was another noise, quite near.
"Stephen, you awake?" I whispered.
"Yup," he replied in a weary but normal voice.
"What was that?"
"How the hell should I know."
"It sounded big."
"Everything sounds big in the woods."
This was true. Once a skunk had come plodding through our camp and it had sounded like a stegosaurus. There was another heavy rustle and then the sound of lapping at the spring. It was having a drink, whatever it was.
I shuffled on my knees to the foot of the tent, cautiously unzipped the mesh and peered out, but it was pitch black. As quietly as I could, I brought in my backpack and with the light of a small flashlight searched through it for my knife. When I found it and opened the blade I was appalled at how wimpy it looked. It was a perfectly respectable appliance for, say, buttering pancakes, but patently inadequate for defending oneself against 400 pounds of ravenous fur.
Carefully, very carefully, I climbed from the tent and put on the flashlight, which cast a distressingly feeble beam. Something about fifteen or twenty feet away looked up at me. I couldn't see anything at all of its shape or size -- only two shining eyes. It went silent, whatever it was, and stared back at me.
"Stephen," I whispered at his tent, "did you pack a knife?"
"No."
"Have you got anything sharp at all?"
He thought for a moment. "Nail clippers."
I made a despairing face. "Anything a little more vicious than that? Because, you see, there is definitely something out here."
"It's probably just a skunk."
"Then it's one big skunk. Its eyes are three feet off the ground."
"A deer then."
I nervously threw a stick at the animal, and it didn't move, whatever it was. A deer would have bolted. This thing just blinked once and kept staring.
I reported this to Katz.
"Probably a buck. They're not so timid. Try shouting at it."
I cautiously shouted at it: "Hey! You there! Scat!" The creature blinked again, singularly unmoved. "You shout," I said.
"Oh, you brute, go away, do!" Katz shouted in merciless imitation. "Please withdraw at once, you horrid creature."
"Fuck you," I said and lugged my tent right over to his. I didn't know what this would achieve exactly, but it brought me a tiny measure of comfort to be nearer to him.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm moving my tent."
"Oh, good plan. That'll really confuse it."
I peered and peered, but I couldn't see anything but those two wide-set eyes staring from the near distance like eyes in a cartoon. I couldn't decide whether I wanted to be outside and dead or inside and waiting to be dead. I was barefoot and in my underwear and shivering. What I really wanted -- really, really wanted -- was for the animal to withdraw. I picked up a small stone and tossed it at it. I think it may have hit it because the animal made a sudden noisy start (which scared the bejesus out of me and brought a whimper to my lips) and then emitted a noise -- not quite a growl, but near enough. It occurred to me that perhaps I oughtn't provoke it.
"What are you doing, Bryson? Just leave it alone and it will go away."
"How can you be so calm?"
"What do you want me to do? You're hysterical enough for both of us."
"I think I have a right to be a trifle alarmed, pardon me. I'm in the woods, in the middle of nowhere, in the dark, staring at a bear, with a guy who has nothing to defend himself with but a pair of nail clippers. Let me ask you this. If it is a bear and it comes for you, what are you going to do -- give it a pedicure?"
"I'll cross that bridge when I come to it," Katz said implacably.
"What do you mean you'll cross that bridge? We're on the bridge, you moron. There's a bear out here, for Christ sake. He's looking at us. He smells noodles and Snickers and -- oh, shit."
"What?"
"Oh. Shit."
"What? "
"There's two of them. I can see another pair of eyes."
Just then, the flashlight battery started to go. The light flickered and then vanished. I scampered into my tent, stabbing myself lightly but hysterically in the thigh as I went, and began a quietly frantic search for spare batteries. If I were a bear, this would be the moment I would choose to lunge.
"Well, I'm going to sleep," Katz announced.
"What are you talking about? You can't go to sleep."
"Sure I can. I've done it lots of times." There was the sound of him rolling over and a series of snuffling noises, not unlike those of the creature outside.
"Stephen, you can't go to sleep," I ordered. But he could and he did, with amazing rapidity.
The creature -- creatures, now -- resumed drinking, with heavy lapping noises. I couldn't find any replacement batteries, so I flung the flashlight aside and put my miner's lamp on my head, made sure it worked, then switched it off to conserve the batteries. Then I sat for ages on my knees, facing the front of the tent, listening keenly, gripping my walking stick like a club, ready to beat back an attack, with my knife open and at hand as a last line of defense. The bears -- animals, whatever they were -- drank for perhaps twenty minutes more, then quietly departed the way they had come. It was a joyous moment, but I knew from my reading that they would be likely to return. I listened and listened, but the forest returned to silence and stayed there.
Eventually I loosened my grip on the walking stick and put on a sweater -- pausing twice to examine the tiniest noises, dreading the sound of a revisit -- and after a very long time got back into my sleeping bag for warmth. I lay there for a long time staring at total blackness and knew that never again would I sleep in the woods with a light heart.
And then, irresistibly and by degrees, I fell asleep.
SALON | May 20, 1998
Excerpted from "A Walk in the Woods," by Bill Bryson. Copyright 1998 by Bill Bryson. Reprinted by permission of Broadway Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
Bill Bryson is the author of "The Lost Continent," "Mother Tongue," "Neither Here Nor There," "Made in America" and "Notes From a Small Island."


	A L S O +T O D A Y A talk with Bill Bryson By Don George On writing, hiking and other arduous pleasures T A B L E_T A L K Visiting Bankok? Travelers discuss places to go, people to see in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk R E C E N T L Y Student protests bloom By Rolf Potts Spring is here -- time to put on the riot gear! (05/19/98) The tomb of the unknown soldier By Roxanne Nelson An unforgettable encounter in southern France (05/18/98) Mondo Weirdo Tales of Koh Samui Readers' adventures on Thailand's fabled -- or is it just mislabeled? -- island (05/15/98) Don't go there By Tim Barrett Way off the beaten track in Mexico (05/14/98) There'll always be a London By Douglas Cruickshank A wandering wonderer ponders the passions of collectors and cabbies (05/13/98) Browse the Wanderlust Passages archives		__A WALK IN THE WOODS .\|. PAGE 2 OF 2 We hiked through deep-seeming woods, along gloriously untaxing terrain, climbing a gentle 500 feet in four miles. In the Smokies, you can climb 500 feet in, well, about 500 feet. This was more like it. The weather was kindly, and there was a real sense of spring being on the turn. And there was life everywhere -- zumming insects, squirrels scampering along boughs, birds twittering and hopping about, spider webs gleaming silver in the sun. Twice I flushed grouse, always a terrifying experience: an instantaneous explosion from the undergrowth at your feet, like balled socks fired from a gun, followed by drifting feathers and a lingering residue of fussy, bitching noise. I saw an owl, which watched me imperturbably from a nearby stout limb, and loads of deer, which raised their heads to stare but otherwise seemed fearless and casually returned to their browsing when I had passed. Sixty years ago, there were no deer in this neck of the Blue Ridge Mountains. They had been hunted out of existence. Then, after the park was created in 1936, thirteen white-tailed deer were introduced, and, with no one to hunt them and few predators, they thrived. Today there are 5,000 deer in the park, all descended from those original thirteen or others that migrated from nearby. Surprisingly, considering its modest dimensions and how little room there is for real backcountry, the park is remarkably rich in wildlife. Bobcats, bears, red and gray foxes, beaver, skunks, raccoons, flying squirrels, and our friends the salamanders exist in admirable numbers, though you don't often see them, as most are nocturnal or wary of people. Shenandoah is said to have the highest density of black bears anywhere in the world -- slightly over one per square mile. There have even been reported sightings (including by park rangers, who perhaps ought to know better) of mountain lions, even though mountain lions haven't been confirmed in the eastern woods for almost seventy years. There is the tiniest chance that they may exist in pockets in the northern woods (we shall get to that in due course, and I think you'll be glad you waited) but not in an area as small and hemmed in as Shenandoah National Park. We didn't see anything terribly exotic, or even remotely exotic, but it was nice just to see squirrels and deer, to feel that the forest was lived in. Late in the afternoon, I rounded a bend to find a wild turkey and her chicks crossing the trail ahead of me. The mother was regal and unflappable; her chicks were much too busy falling over and getting up again even to notice me. This was the way the woods were supposed to be. I couldn't have been more delighted. We hiked till five and camped beside a tranquil spring in a small, grassy clearing in the trees just off the trail. Because it was our first day back on the trail, we were flush for food, including perishables like cheese and bread that had to be eaten before they went off or were shaken to bits in our packs, so we rather gorged ourselves, then sat around smoking and chatting idly until persistent and numerous midgelike creatures (no-see-ums, as they are universally known along the trail) drove us into our tents. It was perfect sleeping weather, cool enough to need a bag but warm enough that you could sleep in your underwear, and I was looking forward to a long night's snooze -- indeed was enjoying a long night's snooze -- when, at some indeterminate dark hour, there was a sound nearby that made my eyes fly open. Normally, I slept through everything -- through thunderstorms, through Katz's snoring and noisy midnight pees -- so something big enough or distinctive enough to wake me was unusual. There was a sound of undergrowth being disturbed -- a click of breaking branches, a weighty pushing through low foliage -- and then a kind of large, vaguely irritable snuffling noise. Bear! I sat bolt upright. Instantly every neuron in my brain was awake and dashing around frantically, like ants when you disturb their nest. I reached instinctively for my knife, then realized I had left it in my pack, just outside the tent. Nocturnal defense had ceased to be a concern after many successive nights of tranquil woodland repose. There was another noise, quite near. "Stephen, you awake?" I whispered. "Yup," he replied in a weary but normal voice. "What was that?" "How the hell should I know." "It sounded big." "Everything sounds big in the woods." This was true. Once a skunk had come plodding through our camp and it had sounded like a stegosaurus. There was another heavy rustle and then the sound of lapping at the spring. It was having a drink, whatever it was. I shuffled on my knees to the foot of the tent, cautiously unzipped the mesh and peered out, but it was pitch black. As quietly as I could, I brought in my backpack and with the light of a small flashlight searched through it for my knife. When I found it and opened the blade I was appalled at how wimpy it looked. It was a perfectly respectable appliance for, say, buttering pancakes, but patently inadequate for defending oneself against 400 pounds of ravenous fur. Carefully, very carefully, I climbed from the tent and put on the flashlight, which cast a distressingly feeble beam. Something about fifteen or twenty feet away looked up at me. I couldn't see anything at all of its shape or size -- only two shining eyes. It went silent, whatever it was, and stared back at me. "Stephen," I whispered at his tent, "did you pack a knife?" "No." "Have you got anything sharp at all?" He thought for a moment. "Nail clippers." I made a despairing face. "Anything a little more vicious than that? Because, you see, there is definitely something out here." "It's probably just a skunk." "Then it's one big skunk. Its eyes are three feet off the ground." "A deer then." I nervously threw a stick at the animal, and it didn't move, whatever it was. A deer would have bolted. This thing just blinked once and kept staring. I reported this to Katz. "Probably a buck. They're not so timid. Try shouting at it." I cautiously shouted at it: "Hey! You there! Scat!" The creature blinked again, singularly unmoved. "You shout," I said. "Oh, you brute, go away, do!" Katz shouted in merciless imitation. "Please withdraw at once, you horrid creature." "Fuck you," I said and lugged my tent right over to his. I didn't know what this would achieve exactly, but it brought me a tiny measure of comfort to be nearer to him. "What are you doing?" "I'm moving my tent." "Oh, good plan. That'll really confuse it." I peered and peered, but I couldn't see anything but those two wide-set eyes staring from the near distance like eyes in a cartoon. I couldn't decide whether I wanted to be outside and dead or inside and waiting to be dead. I was barefoot and in my underwear and shivering. What I really wanted -- really, really wanted -- was for the animal to withdraw. I picked up a small stone and tossed it at it. I think it may have hit it because the animal made a sudden noisy start (which scared the bejesus out of me and brought a whimper to my lips) and then emitted a noise -- not quite a growl, but near enough. It occurred to me that perhaps I oughtn't provoke it. "What are you doing, Bryson? Just leave it alone and it will go away." "How can you be so calm?" "What do you want me to do? You're hysterical enough for both of us." "I think I have a right to be a trifle alarmed, pardon me. I'm in the woods, in the middle of nowhere, in the dark, staring at a bear, with a guy who has nothing to defend himself with but a pair of nail clippers. Let me ask you this. If it is a bear and it comes for you, what are you going to do -- give it a pedicure?" "I'll cross that bridge when I come to it," Katz said implacably. "What do you mean you'll cross that bridge? We're on the bridge, you moron. There's a bear out here, for Christ sake. He's looking at us. He smells noodles and Snickers and -- oh, shit." "What?" "Oh. Shit." "What? " "There's two of them. I can see another pair of eyes." Just then, the flashlight battery started to go. The light flickered and then vanished. I scampered into my tent, stabbing myself lightly but hysterically in the thigh as I went, and began a quietly frantic search for spare batteries. If I were a bear, this would be the moment I would choose to lunge. "Well, I'm going to sleep," Katz announced. "What are you talking about? You can't go to sleep." "Sure I can. I've done it lots of times." There was the sound of him rolling over and a series of snuffling noises, not unlike those of the creature outside. "Stephen, you can't go to sleep," I ordered. But he could and he did, with amazing rapidity. The creature -- creatures, now -- resumed drinking, with heavy lapping noises. I couldn't find any replacement batteries, so I flung the flashlight aside and put my miner's lamp on my head, made sure it worked, then switched it off to conserve the batteries. Then I sat for ages on my knees, facing the front of the tent, listening keenly, gripping my walking stick like a club, ready to beat back an attack, with my knife open and at hand as a last line of defense. The bears -- animals, whatever they were -- drank for perhaps twenty minutes more, then quietly departed the way they had come. It was a joyous moment, but I knew from my reading that they would be likely to return. I listened and listened, but the forest returned to silence and stayed there. Eventually I loosened my grip on the walking stick and put on a sweater -- pausing twice to examine the tiniest noises, dreading the sound of a revisit -- and after a very long time got back into my sleeping bag for warmth. I lay there for a long time staring at total blackness and knew that never again would I sleep in the woods with a light heart. And then, irresistibly and by degrees, I fell asleep. SALON \| May 20, 1998 Excerpted from "A Walk in the Woods," by Bill Bryson. Copyright 1998 by Bill Bryson. Reprinted by permission of Broadway Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Bill Bryson is the author of "The Lost Continent," "Mother Tongue," "Neither Here Nor There," "Made in America" and "Notes From a Small Island."