The analysis of each work was strong. Marshall never failed to bring the piece of literature he was currently reading back to his own experiences on the AT. Through his own solitude, he reflects how a myriad of writers bond over that seemingly desolate feeling of loneliness. Marshall recognizes and sympathizes with Wendell Berry's sentiments about isolation:
Always in big woods, when you leave familiar ground and step off alone to a new place, there will be, along with feelings of curiosity and excitement, a little nagging of dread. It is the ancient fear of the unknown, and it is your first bond with the wilderness you are going into. What you are doing is exploring; you are understanding the first experience, not of the place, but of yourself in that place. But it is an experience of our essential loneliness, for nobody can discover the world for anybody else. It is only after we have discovered it for ourselves that it becomes a common ground and a common bond and we cease to be alone.
While Marshall has plenty of company kudos to several trail-goers (my favorite being Wolverine, seeing as it rhymes with Evergreen--Marshall's trail name), his self-understanding, playful wit and analysis worthy of any English professor's envy grow no less weak. If anything, Marshall spent too much time analyzing other writers' stories before we are allowed to marinate in his own stories from the trail. The personal narrative captures the audience instantly, and Marshall gives us such a vivid picture of rhododendron coated trail, rocky overhangs and battles with porcupines, that we aren't ready to let go of the scene.
Marshall's strongest self reflection results from his thoughts on ecofeminism: Here, Marshall examines the theory that it is feminine nature to not stray too far from interpersonal relationships--women may be drawn towards the connection one feels in nature--the bond with other creatures. However, it's typically more masculine to experience the natural world in order to escape. Basically, the woman's motivation to explore nature is mental, and the man's is physical. The feminine is to understand, the masculine is to keep going, keep going, until far away from societal concerns.
Perhaps this is where the bias draws in. While Marshall admits that he mainly dreamed of his son taking on the Appalachian trail alongside him--and that he's not an adamant ecofeminist--he admits "surely my daughter could stand to gain something from that sort of adventure, too...to devote herself for a few months to the project of clarifying for herself who she is, to show herself and the world that she has the wherewithal to accomplish whatever task she sets for herself" (69).
Aw, shucks. Spoiler alert: The ecofeminist AT hike doesn't exactly happen. Oops.
Later in the book, Marshall allows himself to really dive in the philosophical part of nature writings. He examines what phenomena exists solely because society has a name for it, versus what we can venture to understand outside of language, outside of societal construct. While it's difficult to seek to understand something outside of the spoken/written word, Marshall acknowledges that nature doesn't cease to exist if we stopped giving a name to it. Just as the events in nature rarely come from any spiritual shift in human nature, nature isn't something humans create. The river isn't rocky because our lives are unstable--if anything, our lives are unstable because the river is rocky.
Marshall's writing voice is personable yet sophisticated. Each great feat is told humbly, yet with graceful wit. For nature-readers and city goers alike, I highly recommend this book
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