A Good Read - A Walk in the Woods....

Not the AT, but you get the idea

This book may be dated for some, but thought I'd go ahead and recommend A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson. The book chronicles Bill's attempts and experiences of hiking the Appalachian Trail. Filled with humorous analogies and interesting characters and places on the trail, the book has some great sections of narrative on the modern American landscape.

From historic and current information on the National Park Service to stories of bewilderment that someone might actually walk a mile to Kmart AND end up worse off than had he hiked 20 miles on the trail, Bryson continually references the auto-dependent society we've become and the sameness the American landscape has become due to that dependence.

With today's current infrastructure discussions of deferred maintenance and the ever-increasing costs, I was surprised that back in 1997, the NPS had a repair backlog of $6 billion dollars. I'm beginning to sense a theme that future generations will be bearing the brunt of our misinvestments.