Chapter 15 Summary

In northern Pennsylvania, Bryson stands at a place called Delaware Water Gap, just across the Delaware River from New Jersey. He has a spectacular view of Kitattiny Mountain, which he proceeds to hike up to Sunfish Pond, a mountaintop pond created by glacial movement during the last ice age. Glad to be out of Pennsylvania, he enjoys easier and more interesting terrain and better maps with which to traverse it. The urge for "real hiking" is now overpowering.

Chapter 15 Analysis

Hiking in the Delaware Valley revisits the issue of the strange American attitude toward the wilderness. Either we want to chop it down or enshrine it, so that as few people as possible can access it. The latter happened here in preparation to build a dam that was never even completed, at the expense of villages and farms that were bulldozed for the...