Ken Ilgunas

Yet as the days went by and the pains in my feet subsided, I began to look back on my little adventure with a hint of fondness. When it comes to memories, it seems we all have an editor within who will__f it__l make for a good story__evise the senseless into symbols, or rephrase miseries into warm memories.

Perhaps there__ no better act of simplification than climbing a mountain. For an afternoon, a day, or a week, it__ a way of reducing a complicated life into a simple goal. All you have to do is take one step at a time, place one foot in front of the other, and refuse to turn back until you__e given everything you have.

We have trains to hop, voyages to embark on, and rides to hitch. And then there__ the great American wild__anishing but still there__eady to impart its wisdom from an Alaskan peak or a patch of grass growing in a crack of a city sidewalk. And no matter how much sprawl and civilization overtake our wilds, we__l always have the boundless wildlands in ourselves to explore.

On a hike, the days pass with the wind, the sun, the stars; movement is powered by a belly full of food and water, not a noxious tankful of fossil fuels. On a hike, you're less a job title and more a human being....A periodic hike not only stretches the limbs but also reminds us: Wow, there's a big old world out there.

I wonder what Thoreau would have done...[H}is greatest story, I thought, was his life. He knew that anything is possible when you wield the pen and claim your life as your own. But the truth is so few have the privilege to write their own stories. People are born into poverty without a hope of redemption. Children are abused and damaged. Disease and war and famine and a million other things prevent them from wielding the pen. But for those of us who can, should it not be our great privilege to live the lives we've imagined? To be who we want to be? To go on our own great journeys and share our experiences with others?

... But these skeptics are only selectively skeptical. They think themselves enlightened for resisting all this new proof and remaining steadfast in mistrusting anything that someone else says. But it is a false enlightenment to accept only those ideas that align with one's worldview and reject those that don't.