a walk in the wooda

A Walk in the Woods

This film depicts mainly the journey two aged men took to the Appalachian Mountains.

Author Bill Bryson, after living two decades in Britain, returned to New Hampshire. One day, he attended a funeral with his wife. After paying their respects, Bill took a stroll in the wood and happened to see the sign of Appalachian Trail. Somehow, Bill tried to hike its entire length. Not surprisingly, considering Bill’s age and health condition, his wife objected and presented Bill all the accidents and murders on this trail. However, Bill wasn』t frightened and his determination to take this trip wasn』t rotted at all. His wife relented on condition that Bill went for the trip with a companion. Therefore, Bill tried to reach to his old friends, but either refused or declared that he was insane. Nonetheless, an old friend Stephen offered to be his companion and claimed he was fit enough to join in this trip. 

Soon after Bill met Stephen, Bill was totally frightened by Stephen’s out of shape and began to regret on his choice of companion. With this hesitation, Bill and Stephen, still embarked on their trip. Within less than one mile, they were overtaken by a lot of young hikers. They soon grasped the difficulty of this trip, but they were determined to move forward. Along this trip, they came across some pleasant acquaintances, as well as obtaining some pleasant experiences. Along the trip, they encountered bears, stormy weather, and snowing days. One day, like usual, they were caught by pouring rain and escaped to a hut. They noticed a map carved on the log wall, it informed them their location and also helped them to find that they covered less than half of the Appalachian trail. They were kinda defeated, but anyway, they soon generated enough courage and determination to embark on the rest journey. One day, they trekked into a restricted section posted 「for experienced hikers only」. While maneuvering their heavy backpacks, Bill accidentally slipped and pulled Stephan together to fall on a ledge on a steep, rocky cliff. They fell around 15 fifteen onto a ledge spacious enough for them to be comfortable but far enough below the trail to be unable to get back to the trail. They spent the night on the ledge without any hope of getting rescued. The next day, they were released from the ledge by two early morning hikers.

It was because of this accident that both Bill and Stephan decided that was all they needed to go through and finally got back to their home. One day, when Bill went through his mails, he accidentally saw the postcards sent by Stephen at every stop along that trip. The last postcard said something like 「what’s next?」 Bill got inspired and then began to write his new book 「 A Walk in the Woods.」

The sceneries along the trip in the movie left me quite a deep impression, making me wonder about the creature of the Nature. So beautiful and breath-taking. It is reported that people who finished the trip in the trail finally got rid of their depression. As we can imagine, when you got so close to the nature, went through tremendous and uncountable hardships, you may constantly be impressed by how further you can go and how capable you could be. Or maybe you would figure out nothing matters than a healthy body, a chance to get close to the nature and those close friends, family members. While I was watching the film, I was also impressed by how much Stephen trusted Bill regardless of the fact that his health condition was not that desirable to be involved in such a trip. Besides, the spirit of being always curious and never getting satisfied about what you already knew somehow also touched me deeply. No matter how old you get, how undesirable your condition end up with, still there’s something to explore and always keep high spirit towards your everyday life.