He Was Too Young to Die

Bob Brugmann, 17, was enjoying the adventure of his life: A summer-long hike down the Appalachian Trail from Maine. Then came two weeks of disastrous rain.

Under internalized pressure to keep hiking, Bob attempted to cross a normally placid Vermont river where a bridge had washed away just days earlier. Brugmann, a decorated student and skilled backpacker, fell and was swept to death in the floodwaters. Bob's accident shocked family and schoolmates back home; much later, it would inspire his closest friend to tell the story about who this brilliant young man was, the demon forces that might have compelled Bob to take the risk he did, and the arduous grieving process endured by his brother and mother to find peace in the wake of the July 4, 1973 tragedy at Clarendon Gorge. The story also asks tough questions about Bob's age: Was the mature high-school senior too young to navigate the grueling and lonely AT alone?

From memory, journal notes, and conversations with family, trail companions, and friends, Welles Bruce Lobb, with candor and warm-heartedness, delicately tells in this memoir the parallel stories of how his and Bob's lives came together half a century ago. In a New Jersey where they saw demoralizing environmental change; in school where they bonded as outsiders from the centers of popularity; and on the trail where they found solace in nature. Their goals, in time, would diverge as they chased individual dreams. But merge again, posthumously and symbolically, with the aid of the deceased's brother and mother. Who enabled the author to bring into focus and preserve the memory of this son and brother of great promise who made one mistake and would die too young.