It has been a hard week for you. The divorce papers are filed, and your heart is adrift. Also you have sold a piece of property you once promised not to sell. You deposit the check in the afternoon, climb into the pickup truck, and drive east until you smell the sea.
The first night, you have a bottle of rye, a cheap hotel room overlooking the Bogue Sound, and a slim volume of Barry Lopez stories for company. You sleep in your clothes, crosswise on the narrow bed.
In the morning you leave before daylight and hike for hours down the Neusiok Trail, through cypress swamps and longleaf-pine forests. You stop only to write in your journal or to examine an unusual plant. You are in a groove, one trail-step ahead of your pain.
