Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 17, 1991 TAG: 9103210017
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Reviewed by BILL HUDSON
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
David Brill teaches writing and has had extensive experience as a magazine editor and as an outdoor and travel writer. These credentials have enabled him to produce the best account I have read of an end-to-end walk on the Appalachian Trail.
Of some 2,100 hikers who have walked the five million steps from Georgia to Maine, about a dozen have written books and many more have written essays about their experience - most in a chronological journal form, describing scenery and narrating events.
Brill organizes his book by aspects of his trip. There is a chapter on the group he hiked with, one on the changing seasons, another on the towns and people along the trail. Probably the most inspiring chapter is the one detailing his eight-day rest stop in Hot Springs, N.C. But the focus of the book is on the effect these had on him.
The early days of Brill's walk were filled with anxiety and fear. "I was afraid of my own weakness . . . I was afraid of being alone . . . I was afraid of the vast mystery of nature." A storm in Georgia filled him with terror.
Near the end, he decided to forego the ferry ride and wade across the rushing, swirling dangerous Kennebec River. In his journal that night, he recorded, "I have never experienced a more sustained or intense rush in my life."
By that point, Brill had changed. He had learned contentment with simple things, self-reliance, perseverance; he had discovered order and beauty in the natural world; from his contact with generous people on and alongside the trail ("a linear community"), he had learned kindness.
And he had learned to feel at home in the wilderness. "I no longer leave society to visit the woods. Rather, I leave the woods to visit society." Thoreau lives.
by CNB