书摘:A Walk In The Woods (3)

A WALK IN THE WOODS: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail
by Bill Bryson (ZT)


I was told to ask for Dave Mengle because he had walked large parts
of the trail himself and was something of an encyclopedia of outdoor
knowledge. A kindly and deferential sort of fellow, Mengle could
talk for perhaps four days solid, with interest, about any aspect of
hiking equipment.

I have never been so simultaneously impressed and bewildered. We
spent a whole afternoon going through his stock. He would say things
to me like: "Now this has a 70-denier high-density
abrasion-resistant fly with a ripstop weave. On the other hand, and
I'll be frank with you here"--and he would lean to me and reduce his
voice to a low, candid tone, as if disclosing that it had once been
arrested in a public toilet with a sailor--"the seams are lap felled
rather than bias taped and the vestibule is a little cramped."

I think because I mentioned that I had done a bit of hiking in
England, he assumed some measure of competence on my part. I didn't
wish to alarm or disappoint him, so when he asked me questions like
"What's your view on carbon fiber stays?" I would shake my head with
a rueful chuckle, in recognition of the famous variability of views
on this perennially thorny issue, and say, "You know, Dave, I've
never been able to make up my mind on that one--what do you think?"

Together we discussed and gravely considered the relative merits of
side compression straps, spindrift collars, crampon patches, load
transfer differentials, air-flow channels, webbing loops, and
something called the occipital cutout ratio. We went through that
with every item. Even an aluminum cookset offered considerations of
weight, compactness, thermal dynamics, and general utility that
could occupy a mind for hours. In between there was lots of
discussion about hiking generally, mostly to do with hazards like
rockfalls, bear encounters, cookstove explosions, and snakebites,
which he described with a certain misty-eyed fondness before coming
back to the topic at hand.

With everything, he talked a lot about weight. It seemed to me a
trifle overfastidious to choose one sleeping bag over another
because it weighed three ounces less, but as equipment piled up
around us I began to appreciate how ounces accumulate into pounds. I
hadn't expected to buy so much--I already owned hiking boots, a
Swiss army knife, and a plastic map pouch that you wear around your
neck on a piece of string, so I had felt I was pretty well
there--but the more I talked to Dave the more I realized that I was
shopping for an expedition.

The two big shocks were how expensive everything was--each time Dave
dodged into the storeroom or went off to confirm a denier rating, I
stole looks at price tags and was invariably appalled--and how every
piece of equipment appeared to require some further piece of
equipment. If you bought a sleeping bag, then you needed a stuff
sack for it. The stuff sack cost $29. I found this an increasingly
difficult concept to warm to.

When, after much solemn consideration, I settled on a backpack--very
expensive Gregory, top-of-the-range, no-point-in-stinting-here sort
of thing--he said, "Now what kind of straps do you want with that?"

"I beg your pardon?" I said, and recognized at once that I was on
the brink of a dangerous condition known as retail burnout. No more
now would I blithely say, "Better give me half a dozen of those,
Dave. Oh, and I'll take eight of these--what the heck, make it a
dozen. You only live once, eh?" The mound of provisions that a
minute ago had looked so pleasingly abundant and exciting--all new!
all mine!--suddenly seemed burdensome and extravagant.

"Straps," Dave explained. "You know, to tie on your sleeping bag and
lash things down."

"It doesn't come with straps?" I said in a new, level tone.

"Oh, no." He surveyed a wall of products and touched a finger to his
nose. "You'll need a raincover too, of course."

I blinked. "A raincover? Why?"

"To keep out the rain."

"The backpack's not rainproof?"

He grimaced as if making an exceptionally delicate distinction.
"Well, not a hundred percent...."

This was extraordinary to me. "Really? Did it not occur to the
manufacturer that people might want to take their packs outdoors
from time to time? Perhaps even go camping with them. How much is
this pack anyway?"

"Two hundred and fifty dollars."

"Two hundred and fifty dollars! Are you shi---," I paused and put on
a new voice. "Are you saying, Dave, that I pay $250 for a pack and
it doesn't have straps and it isn't waterproof?"

He nodded.

"Does it have a bottom in it?"

Mengle smiled uneasily. It was not in his nature to grow critical or
weary in the rich, promising world of camping equipment. "The straps
come in a choice of six colors," he offered helpfully. I ended up
with enough equipment to bring full employment to a vale of
sherpas--a three-season tent, self-inflating sleeping pad, nested
pots and pans, collapsible eating utensils, plastic dish and cup,
complicated pump-action water purifier, stuff sacks in a rainbow of
colors, seam sealer, patching kit, sleeping bag, bungee cords, water
bottles, waterproof poncho, waterproof matches, pack cover, a rather
nifty compass/thermometer keyring, a little collapsible stove that
looked frankly like trouble, gas bottle and spare gas bottle, a
hands-free flashlight that you wore on your head like a miner's lamp
(this I liked very much), a big knife for killing bears and
hillbillies, insulated long johns and undershirts, four bandannas,
and lots of other stuff, for some of which I had to go back again
and ask what it was for exactly. I drew the line at buying a
designer groundcloth for $59.95, knowing I could acquire a lawn tarp
at Kmart for $5. I also said no to a first-aid kit, sewing kit,
anti-snake-bite kit, $12 emergency whistle, and small orange plastic
shovel for burying one's poop, on the grounds that these were
unnecessary, too expensive, or invited ridicule. The orange spade in
particular seemed to shout: "Greenhorn! Sissy! Make way for Mr.
Buttercup!"

Then, just to get it all over and done with at once, I went next
door to the Dartmouth Bookstore and bought books--"The Thru-Hiker's
Handbook," "Walking the Appalachian Trail," several books on
wildlife and the natural sciences, a geological history of the
Appalachian Trail by the exquisitely named V. Collins Chew, and the
complete, aforementioned set of official "Appalachian Trail Guides,"
consisting of eleven small paperback books and fifty-nine maps in
different sizes, styles, and scales covering the whole trail from
Springer Mountain to Mount Katahdin and ambitiously priced at
$233.45 the set. On the way out I noticed a volume called "Bear
Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance," opened it up at random, found
the sentence "This is a clear example of the general type of
incident in which a black bear sees a person and decides to try to
kill and eat him," and tossed that into the shopping basket, too.