2013 read #39: As Far as the Eye Can See by David Brill.

As Far as the Eye Can See: Reflections of an Appalachian Trail Hiker by David Brill
187 pages
Published 1990
Read from March 17 to March 18
Rating: ★★★ out of 5

I may not be reading this at the tail end of the month, but I think this book makes a nice bookend to The Cactus Eaters, from the beginning of March. Instead of the ennui and small economic crises of the late '90s, which Dan White fled for the Pacific Crest Trail, Brill orients himself as a member of a lost generation, old enough to have observed the upheavals of the '60s and '70s but not old enough to have faced the draft-or-revolution test when he came of age. Here he presents his 1979 journey up the Appalachian Trail (AT) as a substitute test, a self-imposed challenge to stimulate "personal growth" at the cusp of adulthood. It's a predictable story, worn down to nubs and truisms today, but it's probably inevitable in a book like this. Why the sons of the middle class are so concerned about "finding themselves" I'll never know; you'd think spending six months hiking in the woods would be its own reward, without all this late adolescent philosophical mumbo-jumbo. But it comes with the genre.

Even though The Cactus Eaters got weird and far, far too personal, at least Dan White had a way with words. Brill plods through his story with all the grace of an undergraduate writing assignment, shoehorning a clumsy simile into every paragraph as if following some test prep center's guidelines for good writing. Which is hilariously apt, since at the time he published this book, Brill was "Coordinator of the Writing Center at Roane State Community College," something I didn't notice until after I made this comparison. In an additional contrast to The Cactus Eaters, which portrays White descending into poisonous, neurotic obsession with the trail, Brill maintains a tone of bright-eyed optimism and the romance of the backwoods. It makes for syrupy reading sometimes, but to be quite honest, it's exactly what I wanted out of this book. It may not be a particularly good book, but I can't be too hard on it.