If certain nature writers can be criticized these days, it is for their bad habit of over-reaching, mostly for the right metaphor to dramatize their infatuation with the natural world. Often these writers chase readers like myself away because they try to hard to impress.
Walt McLaughlin is also guilty of reaching, but not in his writing. McLaughlin reaches his destination when he walks the entire length of Vermont´s Long Trail, then writes a vivid, lyrical account of it in "Forest Under My Fingernails: Reflections and Encounters on Vermont ´s Long Trail."
McLaughlin´s book is a celebration of the wildness that can still be found in the Green Mountain State, if you have the grit and stamina for it. This is a good, easy read that captures the essence of the loneliness of the long-distance hiker.
It´s all here - the black flies, the rain, the sweltering heat on the trail, the aching legs, the weight of the 50-pound pack, the preoccupation with food - all the stuff a through-hiker will know and must conquer if he or she is to complete the 260-mile-long trail.
McLaughlin touches on a lot more than hiking here. He occasionally - and delightfully - rambles off on God, two shirtless, muscular men he calls the "Shirtless Wonders," the essence of slip knots, bears and the persisting doubts that he is not up to the task of completing his journey.
But McLaughlin is clearly at his best when he writes about how cleansing a long, long walk in the woods can be for the human psyche.
"There is something both comforting and terrifying about this dark, woody silence, as if good and evil have been overridden here by something much more pervasive, much more insidious."
And he learns what back-woods folks - be they hikers, hunters, or adventure-seekers - have always known: when one gets far back enough into the woods, the woods have a way of getting into you.
"I´m convinced that the longer one stays in the woods, the more profound an impact the woods can have upon one´s psyche."
I particularly enjoyed McLaughlin´s book because he refuses to let his trek along the Long Trail become some kind of competitive race. McLaughlin is wise enough to know that one should stop to smell the flowers, as well as the bear scat, if one is to really learn what wilderness is about.
"The worst thing about a campfire is how it slows down a hiker. But that´s also the best thing about it. The hours slip away as the water boils...The campfire creates a window of calm in the swirl of daily activity."
Of course, hiking a stretch like the Long Trail is hardly one momentous event after another. There are long hours of aching muscles, day-hikers who can be downright morons and the bugs.
McLaughlin, a resident of Burlington, encounters moose, deer, songbirds, chipmunks, the whole range of wildlife one would find anywhere in Vermont. But he seems to have a special place in his heart for Vermont´s black bears.
"After seeing a few bears up close and personal, I have developed a tremendous appreciation for them - not because they are especially majestic creatures and certainly not because they are gentle, warmhearted ones. Simply put, they represent an alternative way of life on this planet. And that, I believe, is reason enough for us to find a way to cohabitate with them. I do not fear bears, wolves or wildcats nearly as much as I fear living in a world that has been completely tamed."
This is a good, short book, so good that I am almost tempted to try to do what McLaughlin has done - not just hike the Long Trail, but hike it and learn from it.
| Wood Thrush Books Walt McLaughlin, Publisher 85 Aldis Street St. Albans, VT 05478 802-524-6606 walt@woodthrushbooks.com
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