Long-distance trails, such as the AT, the Continental Divide Trail, the Pacific Crest Trail, and now the North Country Trail (New York to North Dakota), are cruelly seductive to someone with my mom’s genes. Turning around at a reasonable time was apparently low in evolutionary importance for our ancestors. I trick myself into leaving the Trail by pretending to take a spur trail only to find a campsite out of the wind. The next morning, I’m morally obliged not to turn back, because that would constitute backtracking, an unthinkable offense against the explorer’s code of honor. I can only go forward, neither north toward the pine woods of Maine nor south toward summery Georgia, but east toward the car and Real Life.