Every adventure has an inauspicious beginning. Mine started with an email telling me my flight was delayed by an hour. What followed was a full day of scrambling just to get to the start of the John Muir Trail.

The original plan was simple: fly into Seattle, get picked up by my friend Paul, and drive down to Merced, California. Simple plans rarely survive contact with airline schedules. I ended up rerouting through Portland, landing around midnight, and climbing into Paul’s car somewhere close to 1 a.m. He had made fantastic time to come get me. We drove south through the night.