thoughts on trails and love, naturally

Hiking to Skakavac Waterfall yesterday - at 98 meters the tallest in Bosnia and the second tallest in Europe - I had this moment on the trek out of the forest when I really wanted to quit. The trail had been gradually inclining for a while, and the slow but steady elevation gain was taking a toll on me. The hike to the waterfall included a mile straight uphill on a mountain road, then two hours or two and a half to reach the waterfall itself. I'd hit that fatigued point when things - climbs - that were relatively easy a few hours ago felt overwhelmingly difficult. Ryan and Ana - my partners in crime and coworkers - were waiting 25 yards ahead of me. I called out to them to go ahead. I'd catch up after catching my breath and hydrating.

I stood in the center of the three-foot wide trail, trees lining my path, moss covered fallen logs in the woods to my right, and a jagged rock face to my left. The sun shone bright and hot above, but the wooded trail provided shade. Rays of sunshine caught on the leaves and limbs and danced on the earthen path. A slow breeze shuffled through the forest every few minutes. I took it all in, trying to mentally get back in the game, and I found myself thinking of Zander.

Two of my favorite memories with Zan are on trails. I half-laughed out loud as that thought occurred to me. His relationship with hiking is lukewarm, at best. But forests and mountains have played a central role in our story, the path (so to pun) of our relationship. The first of these memories is climbing Cotopaxi in Ecuador to the base camp. I spent all morning - and the night before - consumed with nervous anticipation. I couldn't wait for that challenge, the view, the experience, the photos, the story - but I was terrified of the altitude. And then we were there, drinking that pretty gross tasting tea that may or may not have been legal in our country, keeping our fingers crossed that local folklore of the tea's power to rapidly adjust the body to extreme altitudes was true. Believing in it all. And then after all that waiting and preparing, the bus stopped, and we hopped out, spotting the base camp high above us, and we started walking.

Within minutes most of our group had passed us, and my steps were only slowing. I felt like I couldn't breathe, and every step felt like running up a few dozen stairs, at least. Zan paused when I paused. He told me we could go back, but I so didn't want to. We had a goal. So he encouraged me. One step or two steps at a time was just fine. It started to snow, then really snow. In hindsight it's romantic, that image of us creeping six inches or a foot at a time through a snow storm on the tallest volcano in Ecuador. And that's how we walked - in slow motion - to the base camp. Zan got me there. And we made it up there together.

The other memory is our now legendary (to us) ridge hike in the Andes - on that same trip, just days after the volcano. Our guesthouse owner found the hike when we was 8 years old, and so we thought it would be a perfect hike to introduce us to the region. We turned left at the cows and right at the hollowed out tree and went straight into the field where sheep graze on the towering hillside pastures. We followed a hand-drawn map - one of which hangs in our living room now. That map said we'd come out onto a ridge, but we didn't expect the foot-wide, death-taunting-us-from-either-side ledge on which we actually found ourselves.

Zan was terrified, for good reason, and I was high on adrenaline. We talked about going back the way we came, but that felt just as precarious as going forward. I said let me go ahead, a few feet at a time, to test the path, to find sure footing, to figure out some safe points to rest. And Zan trusted me - despite his total and complete fear of heights, he said okay. When I called back with updates and encouragements, he trusted me and stepped where I stepped.

A half mile later, we nearly collapsed on a wide, flat plateau, the sheer cliffs quickly becoming a memory. The view blew us away, peaks for as far as the eye could see, the sky seemingly just beyond our fingertips. We made it across. And we did it together.

I can only hope our shared life is always like the memories of those hikes in Ecuador. There will be moments - big and small, some seemingly beatable and others that feel insurmountable - when one or both of us will feel as though we can't breathe or that we're stuck, unable to move forward and incapable of going back. I hope we allow ourselves time to breathe, unconcerned of who's passing us by, careless if we're the last to reach the next place. I hope we sink into those moments, giving ourselves a few moments of rest, time to take deep breaths deep enough to quiet the fear and calm the uncertainty. I hope that we're always there for each other, trusting and knowing that something stunning, something unexpectedly wonderful is ahead - that it's worth the fight to get to the other side. Together.

Standing on that trail near Skakavac, I finally started hiking again, taking it one or two steps at a time. 

a hike in rock creek park + transitions

All of the greatest experiences in my life have required me to adapt. To be uncomfortable until I know nothing else. To find joy and contentment in my initial discomfort. Living abroad was certainly that way. I didn't know how to eat with chopsticks when I arrived in Japan, let alone how to speak to my neighbors in Japanese or even how to work the washing machine. Every day there was a new challenge to tackle. Until suddenly, it all felt commonplace, comfortable, my new normal.

The same with going to school out of state. And taking my first solo trip. It was to Mozambique after a girlfriend bailed on me. I was scared out of my wits when I got to the airport and had to figure out how to get to my hostel. In the end, that trip lit an eternal flame in me for adventuring by myself, and for finding my way into - and out of - crazy situations.

Right now I'm going through it with living with Zander. We've planned and worked for this moment for a year, and now that it's here? It's uncomfortable and strange. How much food do we buy for two people? Do I have to watch another car/fishing show? Do we do our laundry together or separate? I'm so fiercely independent that the walls of that small one-bedroom apartment feel like they just don't have enough air sometimes. But I know with a little patience, and a whole lot of trial and error, this will become my new normal, too.

The same was true with adopting Theo. In fact, maybe more so than any other decision in my life. Adapting to his schedule, planning walks, skipping happy hours, hiring a dog walker, playing endless rounds of fetch, training him -- it didn't come 100% naturally to either of us. But now our routines are so intertwined that I don't need to set alarms anymore because he wakes me up at the exact same time every morning. And without thinking, when I get up from the couch to use the restroom or get a glass of water, I open the back door for him to go outside. As I brush my teeth in the morning, it's second-nature to pour him a cup of food.

If you follow me on Instagram, you might have seen a few of these pictures from a recent hike Zan and I took with Theo. Mr. Man (one of Theo's many, many nicknames*) is spending the summer (or at least a month or two) with my mom in Georgia until Zan and I can rent his place and find one of our own that allows dogs. It's a weird transition. My space feels awkward without Theo there to share it with, to insert himself right at my legs, or put his head on my lap, or to walk by my side in the woods.

It's strange, and it's awkward, but it's the right choice for right now. I thanked my mom for the billionth time the other day for taking care of him when she already has a dog and several cats and a bird (a zoo!) to take care of already, and she said, "This is what family is all about."

Before Theo made the long car ride down to Georgia, we took him on an early spring hike in Rock Creek Park. It looked like a gray day with clouds that threatened rain, but on the trail everything was golden, more like early fall than a persistent winter. It was a fairly easy hike, but Theo laid down in every puddle of mud he found, every pond he could stand in, and chased every stick Zander and I threw. That dog is seriously the joy of my life, you can't tell, right? He and Zander and some golden woods, and I am the luckiest.

A lot of things in my life are in transition right now. I'm leaving my job in less than a month to start an internship on Capitol Hill. I'll be in graduate school full time for two years after that. Zan and I have to move again in a month or two. Zan and I are making big decisions and asking big questions about what our future will look like now that my career is decided (and decidedly nomadic).

Many things right now are up in the air, but I know for a fact that I'll always look back at this time as one of the best of my life, uncomfortable transitions and all.

We hiked the 3 mile Northern Loop in Rock Creek Park. Check out Active Life DC for hike details! 

*Theo's other nicknames: Baby Bear, Pumpkin, Mama's Boy, Little Man, Munchkin Man, and Theodore (generally reserved for VIP guests and/or when he's ignoring me). Never, ever Teddy.

2 years

I fell into love like a lanky teenager grows into their limbs. That's a weird analogy, right? But it fits me just right.

I always expected real love to be like the movies - that's how I learned about it all, after all. And books, of course! I expected that if you found the right person, everything would just neatly and cleanly fall into place, and happiness really would be ever after. Love has never been like that for me, though. I've loved twice, maybe three times, and with both - or all three - of those men, it has been turbulent, rocky, kind of psychotic feeling in its intensity. I'm stubborn and independent, but I also want to be comforted, validated, and doted on. But as soon as the men I have loved do those things - and oh, those first two loves! They comforted, validated, doted to the max! As soon as they did those things I thought I needed, so desperately wanted, I kicked and punched and fought and pulled away. Then when I pushed them away, I ran back. I was emotionally all over the place.

I'll never forget the first time I had one of those moments with Zan. We'd been dating a short time - we were in that uncomfortable transition between dating and becoming a real thing - you remember that spot? It was somewhere around noon, and I hadn't eaten. He notoriously doesn't keep breakfast food in his house, and I am a person who needs every. single. meal. I have low blood sugar, and I am a beast if I don't eat. I was upset at him for not thinking of me and stocking his kitchen, but I was passive aggressive about it. Instead of telling him, I gave him the cold shoulder, mean looks, and eventually picked a full-on fight. We were driving somewhere, and I demanded he turn the car right back around because I was going home, dammit! He turned the car around without another word, parked on the street in front of his building, and I stormed out. Without a purpose or a mission because where was I going? And of course I wanted to go back.

He yelled after me, "I'm not coming after you. I won't do this."

And you know what? For the first time ever in a relationship, I walked back, swallowed my pride, apologized, and told him what was up with me.

Let me tell you, it took about a billion of those types of incidents for me to get it through my thick skull that walking away is not the answer. (And, okay, sometimes it is still my knee-jerk reaction. But hey, working on it!)

That was the moment, I think, when I knew this was for real, and I had found the kind of man that can handle me. Yep, not the "dream" man or the perfect man or the one, as so many people say. But a man that I respect to my very core, a man who knows not to indulge when I'm overreacting but absolutely indulges me when I need to cry something out, talk something out, sleep something off, or simply hug it out. A man who has my back. A man who is so right for me.

Relationships are so hard. My mom always said that as I grew up. That they're "hard work." Do you know... that sounded so dumb to me. Love is bliss! Love is fun and exciting and new feelings, and love is perfection, I thought. Surely, she didn't know what she was talking about. But like most things in life, mom is alright right.

Maybe we were both right. Love is bliss, and love is exhilarating and often sucks the very breath from my lungs, but relationships? Now they are hard work.

I have to work at becoming as emotionally independent as I am physically.

We have to work at communicating. No, seriously, we are the two most stubborn people on the face of the planet, and so we fight. We really do. Straight up yelling at each other kind of fights. It happens! Over the dumbest things, too, you don't even know. We're both so fiercely stubborn that we both have to really work on learning when to back down and let the small things go. That, I tell you, is some of the hardest work I've ever done.

I have to work at letting go of my preconceived notions about relationships. This relationship thing isn't what it looks like in romantic novels or '90s Julia Roberts and Sandra Bullock movies. Real life relationships are sometimes boring. Sometimes we find ourselves sitting on the couch on a Saturday afternoon, together, absolutely bored out of our minds. Okay, that's mostly me. He's pretty content doing nothing. Real life relationships don't end with Zan climbing a fire escape to bring me a dozen roses and profess his undying love for me, all the while facing his fear of heights, after a big fight. It's pretty okay with me if we both just say "I'm sorry" and talk about how to communicate better next time. But sometimes he also brings flowers, and that's pretty great, too. And he has faced his fear of heights for me more than a few times - remember the ledge hike in Ecuador? So maybe he really is my Prince Charming, after all.

I have to work at loving him. Oh! The just being enamored of him and fighting the smile that wants to play on my lips when he looks particularly cute in the middle of an argument -that is easy. But the part where I am intentional about making room in our shared lives for the things he wants to do (instead of just hike, hike, hike like I want to!), that is work. And being intentional about making him feel loved in the ways that make him feel the most loved, that takes thought and effort. That's the kind of work that is most special to me. It's my favorite.

So anyway. To get back to my original point - about love being like fitting into awkwardly lanky limbs - that's what this relationship has been like for me. It has been slow and steady. I started out unsure and always always always questioning. Always doubting. I never knew I had such a Doubting Thomas in me, but it's true. I do. Every time he got too close in the beginning and saw me a little more raw, a little more open and honest and imperfect, I pulled away. I was uncomfortable with real love and even more uncomfortable with a real relationship.

But two years in, today, I remember back to the night he left a March madness basketball game to come all the way to H Street NE to meet me for just a single drink in a bar that now no longer exists.

And as I think back to that night, when he said goodbye to me on the sidewalk with a simple hug, nervousness and questions and uncertainty written all over both of our faces, I think that I've grown into this thing. I fit perfectly into our relationship. We fit perfectly.

Happy two years, Zander.

a surprise weekend getaway to boston!

About a month ago, Zan asked me to take the Friday before Valentine's off work and to pack warmly and for a 4-day weekend. Besides so many jokes about Branson, Missouri that I started to get excited about heading to the middle of nowhere, I had no clue what we were doing. For me? Nothing beats a good surprise.

He kept me in suspense up until the day we left. On Friday morning, I was giddy with excitement and my guesses were running the gambit from Vermont (realistic) to Alaska (probably not). We took the metro - and I knew at that point that we'd either be taking a train or flying, and it'd depend on which line we were took as to which we were doing. We switched lines at Gallery Place, and I knew for sure that we were headed to the airport.

As we stepped into the security line at the airport, Zan handed me my ticket; we were heading to Boston. I was worse than a kid in that airport - excited, jumpy, full of energy, and overflowing with anticipation. My ultimate travel fantasy is showing up at the airport with no clue where I'm going, no ticket, and just going. And that's exactly what I got to do. It was the most loving, special gift.

Just like that, we were off to the land of snow, ice, ivy league schools, and home of my longtime best friend, Melanie. The last time we saw Mel and her boyfriend Mike was for Mel's and my birthdays in September in New York. This time, they were (unfortunately!) spending the weekend in Philadelphia, but that didn't stop them from transforming their beautifully decorated apartment into a bed and breakfast for us.We got to spend most of Friday afternoon and evening with them, and then we were left to our own devices.

(Later, Zan let me read his and Mel's email exchanges planning the whole thing, and it made me laugh and cry and just about burst with love.) 

It was such a fun weekend, complete with wandering through the city during a snow storm, eating delicious food, meeting up with girlfriends I haven't seen in far, far too long, buying enough books to last me months, and drinking hot tea until I had to pee every five minutes. Perfection. I tell you what.

Here's a fun top 10 list we compiled at the end of the weekend for Mel and Mike.

10. The speakeasy outdoors store - Hilton's Tent City near the North End is like a divey outdoors store. A speakeasy outdoors store! Some kind of awesome 4-story, narrow, hole-in-the-wall, in a rowhouse, outdoors store. I was wearing Frye's in a snow storm. We stopped in here to get me some Sorel's. I felt like a real New England woman.
9. Fawning over Beacon Hill  - we met up with my JET girlfriend Rachel (whom I haven't seen since 2010!) for pho. We talked nonstop, gave Zan all the JET gossip he could (n)ever want, and then Rachel took us on a tour. We saw the Boston Public Library (gorgeous), the Boston skyline right in the golden hour, the Boston historical park, and Beacon Hill. John Kerry lives up there, the alleys look like England, the homes are $5 million or so, and can I live there, please?
8. Finishing the Boston Marathon without running at all! The finish line is painted and still visible! Even luckier for us, a group of Bostonians were waiting for a friend (who was running? in a snow storm?!) with a "finish" sign so we got further proof of our pretend athletic prowess ;)
7. The bacon parm dipping sauce at Saus - Saus, a Belgian street food and artsy/modern/European restaurant space has 15 different kinds of sauces for their frites.
6. Italian men yelling at each other in Italian in North End - I fell right over my heels into the snow in love with North End. What blows my mind is this hyper-Italian neighborhood is dubbed as touristy, but the food is the best in town. That never happens!
5. All the books at Harvard Bookstore - (my Sorel boots cost me $80 at Hilton's... they were $170 at a store in Harvard Square!) I've been to Harvard Square every time I've visited Boston. It never loses its charm. It's a beauty of a campus. But the best part of that area is Harvard Bookstore. Head downstairs for half-the-price, still-in-new-condition used books.
4. Secret bread and butterscotch pudding at Row 34- One of Mel's closest girlfriends runs the beer program at Boston's hottest new restaurant - Row 34. I've met her several times, and she went out of her way to spoil us when we came in for dinner. Make sure to ask for the bread. Skip the brussels, get the cauliflower or the carrots. Get two orders of pudding.
3. Harpoon Brewery - Clare is one of Mel's college friends, and now she's one of my firends. Clare and I lived together here in DC for a year before she moved back to Beantown for grad school. We caught up over beer and sparkling cider (yummmm!) at the gorgeous, huge, open beer hall at the Harpoon Brewery. It's a 15 minute walk from Row 34 - combine them for a great evening!
2. The elusive, always closed "Mapparium"  - I got unruly in my excitement over seeing the Mapparium. Downright unruly, I tell you. I would not shut up about it. Supposedly, it's a 3-story, stained glass globe of the world from the 1930s with fascinating acoustics - it echoes so clearly it's kind of freaky how you hear your voice, is what I hear. And I have to rely on rumors because it's never open! It's closed all weekend and only open during the week until 4pm. So let's all just take off work so we can see the Mapparium.
1. Mel and Mike's B&B/all of east Cambridge - Mel decorated the bed with felt hearts, left fresh towels with a bowl of m&ms on top (plan, no peanuts, she knows me so well!), and made homemade cinnamon rolls for us for breakfast. It was luxurious. Their apartment is nestled off Cambridge street, and I love their neighborhood. It's local in the best sense - thick Boston accents, Italian home-cooking, and friendliness all around. They may not take reservations quite yet, but I'd definitely recommend staying in Cambridge.

from laguna quilotoa to chugchilan | andes, ecuador

Dear Zander, 

When the pick-up truck driver came to a jarring stop in Quilotoa, and we hopped out of the bed, my first thought was, "my ass is numb," but my second thought was, holy crap what are we getting ourselves into? The hike from that blue-green, translucent crater lagoon in the Andes mountains back to Chugchilan, our itty bitty remote village whose name I don't think we ever pronounced quite right, finally began to seem like the big deal everyone had tried to tell us it was.

Uncharacteristically, I was nervous about the hike. My stomach was complaining at 9:00am when we got to the lagoon, and we know better than to second guess queasy stomachs when we travel. We were both exhausted. We'd hiked - what? 15 hours in 3 days up to that point at some crazy altitudes. The clouds were heavy and thick with a coming storm. Our only map was the hand drawn guide Edmundo had given us. What if we got lost? We'd have no way "out" once we started; our way back was our feet.

We voiced all this, and to tell you the truth, I thought you'd be cautious (and smart), and suggest that we enjoy the crater and catch a bus back to town. But instead, you reminded me (kind of indignantly, even!) that we had traveled by way of about 15 different buses to get to this remote part of the Andes, almost lost my hiking shoes but miraculously got them back, and spent a small fortune to stay at the lauded Black Sheep Inn just for this hike. For this one hike. And you said, so we're here, let's do it.

So we did.

...when you started singing, "Gangster's Paradise" as we hiked between sky-high, narrow crevices in the mountains, and you didn't remember all of the words - and neither did I, but we rapped on anyway, I loved you more.

...when you cheered me to the finish of that three hour downhill climb like you were at a Redskins game and RG3 was scoring the winning touchdown with seconds left because you know how much I despise downhill hiking, I loved you more.

...when we started climbing all the way back up right after we had reached the valley, you said, "Uphill hiking is the worst," and I responded, "We're perfect for each other because when you're down, I'm up," and you laughed at my horrible joke, I loved you more.

...when I admitted that to get through the steepest section of the entire hike, I pumped myself up by singing "Eye of the Tiger," but I couldn't remember the tune, so I sang Katy Perry's "Roar" instead, and you stared at me for a long moment before saying, "Rocky would knock you out for that," I loved you more. (Remember that part? It was at the very end, and there were horses, no... sheep? Pigs? Some animals and a "farm" mentioned on the guide, and we weren't sure, but the route was a shortcut?)

...when I started writing and singing - out loud - love songs to the green benches that appeared every time we needed a break, and you never once recorded it to blackmail me, I loved you more.

...when the older man passed us in his work clothes, sweating and thirsty, using the route as so many of the locals do - as their walk to work, and you gave him a full water bottle from our pack, I loved you more.

...when we stumbled back into the Black Sheep Inn dirty, exhausted, and proud with accomplishment, I loved you more.

...and when we silently, telepathically agreed never to talk about how the 70-year-old couple that we befriended and had hiked the route that same day had beaten us back... well. We're not talking about that, now are we?

Love, 

Cyndi

the ridge hike | remote andes mountains, ecaudor

I trembled as I straightened my legs. I inhaled deeply, and I caught myself thinking that I could really die up here. As though my fear were a pesky fly buzzing nearby, I shook my head to shoo it away. I placed my hands on my thighs, took in another deep breath, and willed my legs to stand tall and to please god stop shaking. I balanced one foot in front of the other; the trail was too narrow to stand with them side-by-side. The not quite foot-wide trail dropped precariously off on either side. It was sheer cliffs down either. For a moment, when I finally rose to my full height, for one minute the danger gave way to the sight of verdant mountainsides and downright breathtaking scenery. At somewhere between 11,000 - 13,000 feet in the air, with mountain peaks that shrank beneath me, and a heavy sky weighing down on top of me, I felt like I'd reached the top of the world. Like I was standing on the very point where earth and sky meet, and were that the case, I can promise you that it's a sight to behold and worth the death-defying climb to reach it.

Zan bellowed from 40 feet below me, his voice stricken with fear that camouflaged itself as anger. HOW MUCH FURTHER?

My legs started to shake again. I'd taken in the view, and for that one instant of total clarity, my fear had receded, but his voice brought me back into the moment, the physicality of our situation, the responsibility that weighed on me. In search of where the trail led, I made the mistake of looking down.

I'm not afraid of heights. I love the feeling of flying while barreling down a 100 foot drop on a roller coaster, and I learned to rock scramble just for the thrill of jumping off cliffs 30 feet above swimming holes below, but this. This was a different sort of height. To my right, the drop was vertical. To the left the drop was vertical. And all that was between me and those vertical drops was this narrow dirt path and the wind, that was unfortunately picking up.

I pulled the hand drawn trail guide out of my jacket pocket. I unfolded it carefully; it seemed like every move I made in those few moments was calculated, was exact, was more cautious than I have ever been. My heart raced trying to read the map standing on this ridge. I reminded myself that Edmundo, the owner of our guesthouse, had discovered this hike when he was 8 years old. Eight. If he could do it then, I could certainly do it now. And then I thought that 8-year-old feet were much better suited to this sort of thing and got flustered all over again.

But I read and re-read the guide.

You will squeeze through a gap in the rocks and come out on the other side of the mountain. I flashed back to the narrow crevice we'd crawled through 20 minutes earlier. Check.

The path splits, with the left heading downhill. Take the less developed path on the right... We'd seen that and gone right. Zan had been leading at that point. We pointed it out and checked it off the map. But early in the hike we'd thought we'd finished one instruction, and we hadn't. We had to retrace our steps. What if we turned the wrong way?

Continue on top of the ridge. Well, there was no doubt we were on the ridge.

Once you get to the plateau, keep along the left edge. What plateau? I couldn't see any end in sight. The ridge was just a balance beam of dirt.

I thought about turning back. Could we scale down the ridge? That seemed as dangerous as moving forward. I read back through the guide and went with my instincts: we had followed it correctly, and this path would - it had to - eventually come out to a plateau.

I moved onward.

Zan, terrified of heights, followed behind me, yelling ahead every few minutes to ask about my progress, what I could see, and for the love of god to stop taking pictures!

I couldn't. The thrill of the ridge hike paralleled my fear, and every time I found large shrubbery to grasp onto or a skinny rock to squat nearby, I took the opportunity and  kept snapping photos.


I repeatedly told Zan I was stopping to catch my breath and that all was fine, and the trail was great to keep encouraging him to move forward and to stay calm. The truth is that every 10-20 feet I re-read the guide, prayed a little that the plateau was ahead, and tried to swallow the pit in my stomach.

At one point, I laughed at the handwritten note at the top of the guide, Warning: If you are afraid of heights, you may not enjoy this hike. So much for that!

Five minutes later, out of nowhere, the ridge emptied into the plateau. It was a large, open area covered in beige reeds and spindly shrubs. Zan fell to the earth and lay there recovering, practically hugging the security beneath him. When we had reached the ledge, he could have asked us to go back, he could have said absolutely not, we don't even know that this is the right path, and I'm terrified of heights, but he stayed on the ridge. And I think that when you find a person that will walk across a foot-wide trail to stand on top of the world with you, that you have everything you'll ever need.

My legs finally stopped shaking, and the adrenaline-laced euphoria eventually subsided until my heart beat normally again. The rest of the hike was less harrowing but only the tiniest bit less beautiful.

When I look back on Ecuador, it's the ridge - that moment of nothing but the sky and the earth and me, and the adrenaline of hiking a tightrope trail - that fill me with every feeling I could ever feel. That hike... every traveler searches for that hike. Every traveler has those few and far between experiences that, like an addictive drug, keep you exploring to the ends of the earth for another.