A WALK IN THE WOULDS

I just finished watching the film version of Bill Bryson’s 1998 travel story, A Walk In the Woods. I read the book nine years ago, as part of Wild Bob’s Musical Book Club, held at Lindberg’s Tavern in Springfield. My friend and former student, Mallory Roth, created and hosted the monthly event, where about a dozen local songwriters would read the same book and write songs inspired in some way by the story. We would gather at the bar on a Friday night to perform our new tunes on stage, maybe talk a little about our lyrics, and cheer for each other’s efforts. It was a big hit for years, with capacity crowds and loads of memorable performances. (A compilation album from the first year is available on all streaming sites). Many of the great books I’ve read and songs I’ve written in the last decade came from the pressure created by those shows. I’ve always been driven by deadlines – the fear of failing to meet an obligation or being publicly humiliated are big motivators. It was very common for me to show up to those gigs with a fresh printout of the chord chart and lyrics I had just finished. Sometimes the first full performance didn’t happen until I was on stage and under the lights. I released a solo album with a full backing band in 2020. Eight of the 14 tracks were originally written for Wild Bob’s. I’m thankful for the creative energy that swirled in my brain and around our community during those years.

The song I wrote for A Walk In the Woods is called “When We Gonna Go.” I liked the book, but I don’t remember being inspired by the drama, the wit, or the specifics of Bryson’s narrative. It did something broader for me. It helped me see my restless DNA in a new way. My parents raised me within the paradox of a submission to lockstep dogmas and a fierce rejection of a mindless herd mentality. I learned to bow to religious Certainty, but not to stay in one place too long. The result has been a lifelong struggle with an inherent need to run –  away from bad things, instead of toward the good – rarely being at peace with the places I inhabit. This misbegotten cocktail of presumptive nobility, guilt, and wanderlust mixes with the themes of discomfort and adventure from the book to ask in the chorus, “When we gonna go? Or are we gonna stay right here?” If there’s a sermon this song preaches, it’s that sometimes truth isn’t location, it’s motion. 

I played and sang it at Lindberg’s on January 9, 2015 – months before the film was released. Eight years have passed and I hadn’t ever gotten around to watching the movie until last night. And I could have skipped it for sure. It’s not good. 

It’s a profoundly predictable, sexist, and saccharine buddy flick where much of the language and many of the observations that make Bryson who he is are Hollywoodized for the masses, or missing altogether. Even the star power of Nolte and the Sundance Kid – who are nearly 40 years older than Bryson and Katz were in the original story – couldn’t make it believable or more than mildly entertaining. 

As I watched, though, I was reminded of the transcendent impulse in the book to move, to ask with eagerness, “What’s next?” instead of whining with irritation, “What now?” As we age, it’s natural for gravity and inertia to pull at us, sometimes for good reason. If I don’t slow down and stop bobbing and weaving, I’ll break a hip. But it’s important to always rage a little against the dying of the light, to at least be intentional about our personal decrescendo.

It made me think about how often I reach for the wouldn’ts, the couldn’ts, or shouldn’ts, when I should walk into the woulds. It’s so easy to give in, to become insular, locked up, safe, angry, afraid. It’s easy to stop trusting in hope and possibilities…in faith. But maybe the kind of faith we need isn’t as simple as belief in a person, creed, or destination. In 1881, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, “[T]o travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.” Maybe we need faith in what’s around the next bend, a faith that keeps us curious and moving. That kind of belief would be something gigantic.