New Path, Same Journey
My most memorable adventures have always begun where the trail ended. There was the time in the Catskills when I veered off a well-beaten path in search of a shortcut to the high peaks. Two hours of bushwhacking later, I stumbled across a swimming hole so idyllic that I spent an entire weekend soaking. There was the weekend in the Tatoosh Range when we chose to climb over—rather than walk around—a huge boulderfield, only to discover a grassy perch on the shoulder of a cliff with a bird’s-eye view of Mt. Rainier. Far from the summer crowds, we pitched our tent and gorged on wild blueberries until our hands turned purple. There was the ill-fated escapade in Idaho’s Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness when a wildfire diverted me onto an unmaintained trail…
