Honesty and Hiking the Appalachian Trail

A WALK IN THE WOODS: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson (Broadway Books, $25, hardcover).

Every traveler will recognize Bill Bryson as a type: the easily annoyed fellow whose favorite word is “stupid.” When he’s not applying the term to individuals he’s applying it to whole towns--maybe to entire countries.

A Bryson on a bus seat or bar stool can be insufferable. But this type also can make us laugh and keep us honest. And this Bryson’s truth-telling happens to be hilarious.

In this book, the middle-age author, allegedly a cult favorite in England, attempts to hike the 2,150 or so miles of the Appalachian Trail, from Georgia to Maine. Off and on he is accompanied by his pal Stephen Katz, an overweight and bumbling underachiever with a heart that’s sweeter than the Little Debbies cakes he craves.

Bryson cuts Katz no satiric slack. Nor do the two of them spare the people they encounter. Bryson’s most splendidly rendered character is Mary Ellen, a know-it-all with an annoying penchant for blowing her nose to clear her ears and a knack for bedeviling Katz and Bryson with her “constant, prattling, awesomely brainless presence.”

“I have long known,” Bryson writes, “that it is part of God’s plan for me to spend a little time with each of the most stupid people on Earth, and Mary Ellen was proof that even in the Appalachian woods, I would not be spared.”

At one point, as their gullible companion clears her ears, Katz persuades her that he knows someone who popped his eye out doing that. “It rolled right across the living room floor and his dog ate it.”

Most sensible readers will agree that Bryson’s silly, semi-Pythonesque humor saves him from his arrogance. But his refusal to purge his writing of Briticisms is unforgivable.

Note to author: So what if you lived 25 years in England? You’re a native of Iowa, and you now call New Hampshire home. A flashlight ain’t no “torch,” a potato chip ain’t no “crisp” and no one on this side of the Atlantic will ever have a clue as to what “a stone” weighs.

THE ART OF THE STATE: California, Iowa, Maryland, New Mexico (Abrams, $12.95 each, hardcover).

Travelogues and travel guides capture places one way, art another. These books, each a bit bigger than a bread slice, aim to reveal the states through their fine and folk art, novels and song lyrics, architecture and crafts. History, politics, geography and economics are also discussed, but usually through the arts.

The spectrum of interpretations offered here can’t help but make visitors more alert to the sensory smorgasbord in each place. Which is the more accurate view of Baltimore, for instance: native son Barry Levinson’s trilogy of soulful films set in that town--”Avalon,” “Diner” and “Tin Men”--or John Waters’ films about his hometown, most of which feature native son (and honorary daughter) Divine, a 300-pound transvestite?

In New Mexico, artist Walter De Maria arrayed 400 steel poles on a square-mile swatch of high desert plateau near Quemado. When the area’s frequent lightning storms pass through, De Maria and nature collaborate on an awe-inspiring light show. In a way, I guess David Muench’s photo of a moon rising over the ruins at Chaco Canyon is a collaboration with nature too.

Iowa can no more be encapsulated by pictures of Sioux City’s ornate Corn Palacesor, Grant Wood’s “American Gothic” than by Rogers and Hammerstein’s musical “State Fair” or the real covered bridges of Madison County. But throw in a Mesquakie Indian cradle and Thomas Hart Breton’s stormy painting, “Spring on the Missouri,” and you begin to get the idea.

The volume on California thinks the soul of our state can be glimpsed in Albert Bierstadt’s misty painting, “Bridal Veil Falls, Yosemite,” and petroglyphs from the Mojave’s Coso Range; in Gold Rush songs and orange crate labels; in a “Viva Chavez!” political poster and the Frank Gehry-designed Aerospace Hall at the California State Museum of Science and Industry in Los Angeles; in a hot rod with painted flames, Christo’s Running Fence and a white plate arrayed with red and gold tomatoes from Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse restaurant.

Sounds about right. And the book is smart enough to offer William Irwin Thompson’s quote: “California is not so much a state of the Union as it is an imagi-nation.”

Quick trips

THE HIGHROAD GUIDE TO THE GEORGIA MOUNTAINS by the Georgia Conservancy; THE HIGHROAD GUIDE TO THE NORTH CAROLINA MOUNTAINS by Lynda McDaniel; THE HIGHROAD GUIDE TO THE VIRGINIA MOUNTAINS by Diane and Garvey Winegar (Longstreet Press Inc., $18.95 each, paper).

These handsome, though not tote-able, guides combine solid information, useful maps, fine line drawings and photos to make these mountains alluring and accessible. A bonus: This year is the 30th anniversary of the Appalachian Trail’s designation as the first national scenic trail. Each of these guides details a stretch.

ADVENTURE KAYAKING: Trips From the Russian River to Monterey by Michael Jeneid (Wilderness Press, $14.95, paper).

The preface calls this “a Whitman’s Sampler of kayaking bonbons.” That’s about right: two dozen trips on such rapids-free waters as Mono Lake, San Francisco Bay and the Monterey waterfront.

ORLANDO’S OTHER THEME PARKS: What to Do When You’ve Done Disney by Kelly Monaghan (The Intrepid Traveler, $14.95, paper).

Sea World, Universal Studios, Cypress Gardens. Yeah, yeah. We know. But we’d never heard of Gatorland (5,000 alligators in 55 acres; barbecued gator ribs, $5 a serving) or our favorite new find, Splendid China. This unlikely attraction, we discover, is a collaboration between a Hong Kong travel company and the People’s Republic of China. Among the amusements is a miniature Great Wall of China that “stands 5 feet tall in places and snakes more than half a mile.”

Books to Go appears the second and fourth week of every month.