A WALK IN THE WOODS: REDISCOVERING AMERICA

A Sense of Place Magazine

Oct 24, 2015

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Now a motion picture starring three of the world's great actors, Robert Redford, Nick Nolte, Emma Thompson, A Walk in the Woods is coming to a screen near you. Based on the book by the best selling and astonishingly, enduringly popular author Bill Bryson, tells the story of how he set off to hike the Appalachian Trail after some years overseas, rediscovering America in the process.

It is not an easy role for Redford. The Appalachian Trail is the longest continuous footpath on Earth. With his distinctly unfit friend Stephen Katz, Redford faces remote mountain wilderness filled with bears, moose, bobcats, rattlesnakes, poisonous plants, disease-bearing tics, and the occasional chuckling murderer.

Savage weather, merciless insects, unreliable maps and a fickle companion whose profoundest wish was to go to a motel and watch The X-Files, Bryson gamely struggles through the wilderness to achieve a lifetime's ambition - not to die outdoors.

As reviewer Robbie Collins wrote A Walk in the Woods was an odd choice for a hit movie. Bryson’s writing doesn’t scream anything: it sets about its work in a hush, tickling, charming, prodding and cajoling so gently that in half an hour you can laugh out loud 10 times and learn 20 new things, even though the prose itself barely seems to have lifted a finger.

"Still, here we are. After 10 years in development, the film version of Bryson’s elegantly meandering travelogue about his middle-aged attempt on the Appalachian Trail – a 2,000-mile trek through the eastern United States – has been shepherded into cinemas. The prime mover was Robert Redford, who originally envisioned it as a reunion for himself and Paul Newman; Butch and Sundance ambling northwards while the sun set at their side.

After Newman’s death in 2008, the script lay fallow for a spell, but in 2013, the casting of Nick Nolte as Stephen Katz, Bryson’s curmudgeonly travelling partner, and the arrival of director Ken Kwapis (He’s Just Not That Into You, The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants) re-energised the project."

With a number of blockbusters hitting the screens for Christmas, reviewers describe A Walk in the Woods as part of the trend towards rueful, positive comedies for an older movie-going audience.

Do yourself a favour and read the book, at least.