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