Way Out There: Adventures of a Wilderness Trekker

Bashō’s Narrow Road to the Deep North and Parkman’s The Oregon Trail (1849) to the great travel books of our own day: the vomiting camels of Thesiger’s Arabian Sands, the muddy Congo paths of Redmond O’Hanlon’s No Mercy, the flitting and plodding of Bruce Chatwin in Patagonia—and, I should add, to a lesser degree, nearly everything in travel that I

the desire to face the unexpected in a wilderness environment; to live by my wits; and, in the process, I hoped to develop higher levels of skill, intuition, and confidence. I was drawn to these types of challenges. I found them compelling and, as I got older, increasingly difficult to resist. I’d had my share of adventure. The

I needed to go someplace that would test my accumulated knowledge and proficiency in the backcountry.

TWO YEARS HE WALKS THE EARTH. NO PHONE, NO POOL, NO PETS, NO CIGARETTES. ULTIMATE FREEDOM. AN EXTREMIST. AN AESTHETIC VOYAGER WHOSE HOME IS THE ROAD. ESCAPED FROM ATLANTA. THOU SHALT NOT RETURN, ’CAUSE “THE WEST IS THE BEST.” AND NOW AFTER TWO RAMBLING YEARS COMES THE FINAL AND GREATEST ADVENTURE. THE CLIMACTIC BATTLE TO KILL THE FALSE BEING WITHIN