Sublime

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

There had been years of planning, and now, just as my solo was starting in earnest, the whole narrative changed. Glancing for a minute at the satellite image map, I searched for an alternate path. I mentally recited the mantra that I knew to be true after years of experience—that the plan falling apart is a natural part of any worthwhile adventure.