I had to look back in my journal of a bp on the Berg Lake Trail, Mt. Robson Provincial Park in BC, Canada five years ago to fill in the blanks JP has provided:

Doing, hiking, completing . . . THE TRAIL IS . . . not about conquering the wilderness. That is never the goal. The goal is to be a part of it. To step up the hill with a pack on your back. To wander farther upstream to a place accessible only to those willing to make the sacrifice and to withstand the pain to get there.

The reward? To witness some of the most beautiful scenery on the planet. To paint images in your memory of a flower, a creature, an insect, a rainstorm. And to be a part of it.

I wish it was me (as do others with a bent toward inhumanism), but it was Robinson Jeffers, the early environmental poet, who wrote:

“A severed hand is an ugly thing and man dissevered from the earth and stars
and his history... for contemplation or in fact...
Often appears atrociously ugly. Integrity is wholeness,
the greatest beauty is
Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty
of the universe. Love that, not man
Apart from that, or else you will share man's pitiful confusions,
or drown in despair when his days darken.”

On every step of the trail, I feel as if I'm happily treading water, NOT drowning in despair.

.