B O O K R E V I E W
A Child’s Walk In The Wilderness
Stackpole Books; 215 Pages; $19.95
Amazon Books
Most parents today spend far less time with their children than before the industrial revolution of the mid 1800’s. Meaningful time, as in not highly structured, not adult centered, not non-family member directed or not necessarily very purposefully spent time.
Taking family time up a significant notch is the request by a seven year old for a grand adventure for himself and his parents. That adventure would mean spending a lot of family time together. Family time on a scale few disgraced politicians ever imagined when they cough up the more time with family phrase while making a rear exit career move.
When seven-year old Asher Molyneaux, after reading about the Appalachian Trail, asked his father if they could hike the 2,200 mile length of it, he had more reason than most kids to expect the answer might be yes. His father said he thought briefly, given the enormity of the undertaking, and said yes. And so began the planning for a trip that would take seven months, cover 2,200 miles over mountains, through rivers, across wilderness and engage Asher’s family in a unique adventure.
The notion of a “super trail” had been a parlor topic in New England hiking-organization and even academic circles for some time, but the October 1921 publication of “An Appalachian Trail: A Project in Regional Planning” in the Journal of the American Institute of Architects is almost universally seen as the moment of birth for the Appalachian Trail. Benton MacKaye—former forester, government analyst, newspaper editor, and at the time intermittently employed as a regional planner—proposed, as a refuge from work life in industrialized metropolis, a series of work, study, and farming camps along the ridges of the Appalachian Mountains, with a trail connecting them, from the highest point in the North to the highest in the South.
MacKaye immediately set about promoting his idea within his network of friends and colleagues in Washington, New York, and Boston, but it was again hikers who took up the cause.
By March 3, 1925, MacKaye and the Regional Planning Association had enough support to convene the first “Appalachian Trail conference for the purpose of the building of the Appalachian Trail.”
On August 14, 1937, the Appalachian Trail finally was on the ground, a continuous “wilderness” footpath of an estimated 2,000 miles from Mt. Oglethorpe, Ga., to Baxter Peak on Katahdin in central Maine.
Hiking on the trail has increased in recent decades. But through hikers, those who hike the full length of the trail remain in the minority. Through hikers Asher Molyneaux’s age, are in a distinct minority within that minority.
Asher’s father Paul has written an unvarnished and unglorified story of this expedition. A Child’s Walk in the Wilderness reads more like a diary than an adventure story. But, make no mistake this is an adventure story. It is the story of a seven year old who turns eight, going on twenty-eight, on a trail that has beaten many an adult. It is a story of the power of self-determination, empowerment at an early age and being allowed to take a big bite out of life for a child and a parent.
Hiking the AT is no walk in the park. Every year hikers are hauled out by rescue crews, many are injured and others die. Endurance, planning and hauling your own food are required. Exposure to exhausting heat, drenching rains, icy ridges and nights spent in cold soaking wet clothes are par for the course.
Throughout this Asher remains upbeat about finding new insects on the trail, strange flora and deer that suddenly dance across the trail a few feet away. All of which he sketches as they travel. His drawings illustrate the book and his aerial perspectives show the influence of spending months on mountain top trails observing the unsuspecting woodlands and wildlife below.
This walk in the wilderness is in fact an extreme field trip for Asher. He was more likely to get yes for answer from his father on this trek not because his father had invested heavily in Microsoft in the 1980’s. On the contrary, his father is a writer, his mother has an agricultural business she runs from home, and both Asher and his older sister Una are home schooled. In fact both parents have invested heavily in their children and school lessons continued while on the trail. Asher’s frequent stops to pick up new bugs, leaves, plants, birds, mushrooms and a stone arrowhead that hundreds of hikers must have missed were central to his lesson plan. Paul wrote that the invisible to everyone else leapt into plain sight for his inquisitive, receptive son.
Asher’s mother and sister Una met up with Asher and his father at various places along the trail. The three of them would hike a few hundred miles while Paul drove back to the family’s small farm in eastern Maine to pick up where he left off. He would return to meet them at designated trail locations and continue on with Asher. While mother and sister returned to Maine. These scheduled changes on and off the trail for the parents and children enabled the family to continue their whole family life and other responsibilities. The personnel changes are just one of the many things that need to be carefully planned on a through hike of the Appalachian Trail.
The right type, weight and amount of clothes, cooking gear, food, daily distance and especially foot wear are just a few. The Molyneaux’s planned food drops where Regina and Una packed food and mailed resupply boxes to post offices near where the trail crossed a road at points along the way.
What cannot be planned are rivers and streams that must be forded or walked across on fallen trees; steep grades; miles of soggy low country and icy high ridges over steep drops.
His father is an observer, both of his son and everything around them. They learn new things about nature every day and they also meet new hikers most every day. Occasionally they drop down from a ridge to a road or hilltown village after weeks on the trail, where they meet others whose stories Molyneaux brings into his. Molyneaux is a seasoned writer, an observer of detail and acutely aware of his surroundings.
This story is less about hiking than experiencing a meaningful journey together. In the mid 1800’s and earlier, long before the automobile and railroad, people walked to where they were going more often than not. The difference with this hike was the adventure, the challenge and the resultant leveling of the family playing field.
About three quarters of the way to Mt. Katahdin, Maine, Paul writes that he began questioning whether he could finish the hike. Asher on the other hand, was still so gung ho, so excited about the adventure, filled with wonder over the wilderness, glorying in the independence and the empowerment, that Paul had to continue.