A Walk in the Woods: Shelly Morgan

Bill Bryson hiked the Appalachian Trail, leaving and returning to it. Over the months, he notice a pattern, which he describes in A Walk in the Woods:

"At the end of the first day, you feel mildly, self-consciously, grubby; by the second day, disgustingly so; by the third, you are beyond caring; by the fourth, you have forgotten what it is like not to be like this. Hunger, too, follows a defined pattern. On the first night you're starving for your noodles; on the second night you're starving but wish it wasn't noodles; on the third you don't want the noodles but know you had better eat something; by the fourth you have no appetite at all but just eat because that is what you do at this time of day. I can't explain it, but it's strangely agreeable."

Listening Point: Jo-Ann Mapson

In his book Listening Point, Sigurd Olson revels in "The Sound of Rain:"

‘Last night in my tent I listened to the rain. ... The tent, on the little rise with its thick cushion of bearberry, had perfect drainage all around, and the ropes were tied to two good trees. The gale could blow now and the rain come down, but I would be safe and dry the rest of the night. I settled down luxuriously to enjoy a sound I had known on countless campsites in the wilderness.
...
As I lay there, I too seemed to expand and grow, become part of the lushness and the rain itself and of all the thirsty life about me. This is one of the reasons I like to hear the rain come down on a tent. I am close to it then, as close as one can be without actually being in it.
...
"In my old tent somewhere, safe and dry with nothing to do but listen to the rain come down."'

My Wilderness: Eleanor Huffines

Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas visited the Brooks Range and wrote about it in My Wilderness: The Pacific West.

"The Arctic has strange stillness that no other wilderness knows. It has loneliness, too -- a feeling of isolation and remoteness born of vast spaces, the rolling tundra, and the barren domes of limestone mountains. This is a loneliness that is joyous and exhilarating. All the noises of civilization have been left behind; now the music of the wilderness can be heard. ...

The Arctic has a call that is compelling. The distant mountains make one want to go on and on over the next ridge and over the one beyond. The call is that of a wilderness known only to a few. It is a call to adventure. This is not a place to possess ... it is one to behold with wonderment."

A Walk in the Woods: Katie Conway

Bill Bryson hiked the Appalachian Trail and wrote about it in A Walk in the Woods:

‘Life takes on a neat simplicity, too. Time ceases to have any meaning. When it is dark, you go to bed, and when it is light again you get up, and everything in between is just in between. ...

You have no engagements, commitments, obligations, or duties.... All that is required of you is a willingness to trudge.

There is no point in hurrying because you are not actually going anywhere. However far or long you plod, you are always in the same place: in the woods. It's where you were yesterday, where you will be tomorrow. ...

Walking for hours and miles becomes as automatic, as unremarkable, as breathing. At the end of the day you don't think, "Hey, I did sixteen miles today," any more than you think, "Hey, I took eight-thousand breaths today." It's just what you do.'

Steepletop - Lilacs: Leslie Shallcross

Edna St. Vincent Millay loved the lilacs in her garden, but she noticed what happened in the rain in her poem "Steepletop." This is the second stanza of the poem:

"Nothing could stand
All this rain.
The lilacs were drowned, browned
    before I had even
    smelled them
Cool against my cheek, held down
A little by my hand.
Pain
Is seldom preventable, but is
    presentable
Even to strangers on a train--
But what the rain
Does to the lilacs--is something
    you must sigh and try
To explain."