Promenons-nous dans les bois

Bill Bryson

ISBN : 0552997021
Éditeur : Black Swan (1998)

Note moyenne : 4.17/5 (sur 6 notes) Ajouter à mes livres

Rentré aux États-Unis au milieu des années 1990 après avoir longtemps vécu en Angleterre, le désopilant Bill Bryson nous avait raconté les péripéties de son quotidien dans American Rigolos (Payot, 2001).
Outre observer la faune de ses concitoyens, il a voulu redé... > voir plus

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Critiques et avis(1)

Livres 5.00/5
Par iarsenea, le 19 juillet 2011
Ah, Bill Bryson ! Jamais je ne me lasserai de ses livres, tous truffés d'anecdotes, d'humour et de curiosités de toutes sortes !
Dans A walk in the woods, Bryson nous raconte ses tentatives de parcourir l'Appalachian Trail, un sentier de plus de 2000 miles parcourant tout l'Est des États-Unis, depuis le Maine jusqu'en Géorgie.
J'avais tellement hâte de découvrir cet épisode de la vie de Bill Bryson ! J'étais certaine que j'allais encore passer un bon moment en sa compagnie. Son humour et son ironie me rejoint tout à fait, et c'est souvent en riant aux larmes que je le lis. Comme si ce n'était pas assez, Bill Bryson est très cultivé et informé, ce qui fait qu'on apprend des tonnes de choses à chaque fois qu'on le lit. Un énorme merci donc à mon amie Vesna de me l'avoir fait parvenir par la poste.
Si je n'ai pas autant appris de A walk in the woods que de Une histoire de tout, ou presque... , j'ai de nombreuses fois souri devant la manière qu'a Bryson de raconter les nombreuses difficultés rencontrées. le plus drôle, maintenant, c'est qu'après l'avoir lu râler et râler sur la longueur du sentier et sur ses nombreuses difficultés, je réalise que j'aimerais m'y essayer un jour ! On dirait bien que j'ai le sens du défi...
Le phénomène avec lequel Bryson a décidé de faire ce long voyage, Stephen Katz, m'a aussi beaucoup amusée. Apparemment, ce dernier figure dans plusieurs des romans de Bryson, mais c'était la première fois que je le « rencontrais ».
Je ne saurais trop vous conseiller de vous lancer dans la lecture de cet auteur, si vous ne le connaissez pas déjà. Vous êtes assurés de passer un bon moment. Peut-être même mettera-t-il un peu de piquant dans vos journées les plus ennuyantes !

Lien : http://lecturesdisabelle.blogspot.com/2011/07/walk-in-woods.html
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Critiques presse (1)

Lexpress , le 11 avril 2012
Sous l'hilarant périple de deux quadragénaires, une satire de l'Amérique.

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Citations et extraits

Par iarsenea, le 18 juillet 2011

In 1996 the Wall Street Journal ran a splendid article on the nuisance of satellite navigation devices, cellphones and other such appliances in the wilderness. All this high-tech equipment, it appears, is drawing up into the mountains people who perhaps shouldn't be there. At Baxter State Park in Maine, the Journal reported, one hiker called up a National Guard Unit asked them to send a helicopter to airlift him off the Mount Katahdin because he was tired. On Mount Washington, meanwhile, ' two very-demanding young women ', according to an official there, called the mountain patrol HQ and said they couldn't manage the last mile and a half to the summit even though there were still four hours of daylight left. They asked them for a rescue team to come and carry them back to their car. The request was refused. A few minutes later, they called again and demanded in that case that a rescue team bring them some torches. That request was refused also. A few days later, another hiker called them because he was a day behind schedule and was afraid he would miss an important business meeting. The article also described several people who had got lost with satellite navigation devices. They were able to report their positions as 36.2 degrees north by 17,48 degrees west or whatever, but unfortunately didn't have the faintest idea what that meant as they hadn't brought maps or compasses or, evidently, brains.
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Par iarsenea, le 14 juillet 2011

At the time of our hike, the Appalachian Trail was fifty-nine years old. That is, by American standards, incredibly venerable. The Oregon and Santa Fe trail didn't last as long. The old coast-to-coast Lincoln Highway, a road that brought transforming wealth and life to hundreds of little towns, so important and familiar that it became known as 'America's main street' didn't last as long. Nothing in America does. If a product or entreprise doesn't constantly reinvent itself it is superseded, cast aside, abandoned without sentiment in favour of something bigger, newer and, alas, always, always uglier. And then, there is the good old AT, still quietly ticking along after six decades, unassuming, splendid, faithful to its founding principles, sweetly unaware that the world has quite moved on. It's a miracle really.
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Par iarsenea, le 14 juillet 2011

But consider this. In 1991, as its trees were dying, its buildings crumbling, its visitors being turned away from campgrounds it could not afford to keep open, and its employees being laid off in records numbers , the National Park Service threw a seventy-fifth anniversary party for itself in Vail, Colorado. It spent $500 000 on the event. That may not be quite as moronically negligent as tipping hundreds of gallons of poison into a wilderness stream, but it is certainly in the right spirit.
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Par iarsenea, le 14 juillet 2011

For nearly its whole lenght through the Smokies, the AT marks the boundary between North Carolina and Tennessee. I liked it very much- the idea of being able to stand with my left foot in one state and my right foot in the other whenever I wanted, which was often, or to choose at rest breaks between sitting on a log in Tennessee and a rock in North Carolina, or to pee across state lines, or many other variations.
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Par iarsenea, le 18 juillet 2011

Among the Mount Washington weather station's many other records are : most weather instruments destroyed, most wind in twenty-four hours (nearly 3,100 miles of it), and lowest wind chill (a combination of 100 mph winds and a temperature of -47 F, a severity unmatched even in Antarctica).
Washington owes its curiously extreme weather not so much to height and latitude, though both are factors, as its position at the precise point where high altitude weather systems from Canada and the Great Lakes pile into moist, comparatively warm air from the Atlantic or southern US. In consequence, it receives 246 inches of snow a year and snowpacks of 20 feet. In one memorable storm in 1969, 98 inches of snow- that's eight feet- fell on the summit in three days.
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