When the Fairway Readers met Oct. 11 to discuss Bill Bryson’s “A Walk in the Woods,” facilitator and vice president Tom Haugsby asked the readers about their own most difficult physical challenges ever endeavored to perform. Though some readers shared activities similar to Bryson’s, others were unanticipated and unusual.  

Natalie Hlavna mentioned Outward Bound, Sue Blechl remembered rope climbing in school, Deena Baird reported parasailing for her 70th birthday, Marty Martin hiked and rafted, Dan Kellams had a good hike in Alaska around the Arctic Circle and Geri Thacker talked about the Rocky Mountain National Park. But Jan Schoff remembered a job that required her to walk in three-inch-high heels on a marble floor for three hours and Kathleen McAtee participated in competitive baton twirling. Fairway Readers President Moe Opper found learning to sew so challenging that her mother finally gave up on the project.

But for Bill Bryson and a companion he calls “Katz,” hiking some of the Appalachian Trail was a way to rediscover America, a place where nothing seems to last very long; yet, the country seems to constantly reinvent itself.  Seen against the historical backdrop of some turmoil within the earth’s mantle, which caused land to break off into pieces and chunks only to reassemble, bump into each other again and collide, this slow motion dance has resulted in scenes of breathtaking beauty, sometimes captured by artists and sometimes felt by hikers such as Bryson and Katz despite enormous challenges and frustrations.

Dean Kellams said that what author Bryson had to do was to document side stories to accomplish “an extraordinary feat of writing a quarter of a century ago,” which invites readers to enter a world of forest canopies, birds, moose and deer, bears and catamounts, and perhaps even human predators. For Bryson, the hike meant a time when he was happily slender and fit, when he marveled at nature and “the benign dark power of woods.” He understood “the colossal scale of the world” and found a part of America that millions of us scarcely know exists.

Fairway Readers is a Recreation Centers of Sun City chartered club that meets on the second Friday every month to discuss a book recommended and approved by the members every year at the November meeting. The readers next meet 1 p.m. Nov. 8 to discuss Timothy Egan’s “The Immortal Irishman” about an Irish revolutionary who became an American hero leading the Irish Brigade in fierce battles of the Civil War.  Fairway Readers is open to Sun City residents with a current RCSC card.