And if one of those impatient people is young and strong enough to carry your sleeping bag after you and your backpack get fished out, you have to be grateful, whether you want to or not. We're three days out and I think I could make it, if I had to, without my tent or maybe even without my bear canister of food. But not the sleeping bag. I don't want to think about a High Sierra night without dry down.

My gratitude to Jim is real, even if tinged with the resentment of one who feels she's been hijacked and marched past lakes she wanted to swim in, meadows she wanted to sit in, and days she meant to savor.

And there's another gratitude welling up inside me, one not made puny by ire: the gratitude that this High Sierra wilderness exists.

I've seen Ansel Adams photos, read John Muir, dozed off to the Discovery channel. But to be here gives new meaning to phrases such as breathtaking and stunning beauty. I've seen alpine glow and sparkling granite. I've watched horses run wild across a meadow, stared at a buck on the trail. I have looked out across valleys and peaks and really felt my breath leave, my feet step back in astonishment.

I'm grateful to Ansel Adams and John Muir and every other person who ever sounded the clarion call, whoever, in any way, helped protect this. After all, ain't no mountain high enough. Ain't no river wide enough, that there's not someway for us to muck it up and lose it forever.

I've fallen behind. Again. I don't care. I'll get there when I get there. Now, coming toward me hiking the John Muir Trail in the opposite direction is a woman, apparently trekking alone. For the last couple of days we've been where you don't see many other people. Any human form rounding a corner is a bit of a startle. But it's the women alone who most give me a thrill. It's not advised behavior. If I were to give Dudley -- um, I mean Jim -- and the others a big heave-ho and go it alone, my paper might dismember me upon return. Still, I envy and admire the solo hikers like the one walking toward me. She seems so free and brave. I can tell she's not going to stop because she has a good loping stride going and it's getting late and she must be trying to make it to a campsite. She looks to be about 50.

But she does call out a greeting.

"Hello, how's your day going?" she asks as she passes.

"One of the worst ever," I answer cheerfully. "But I'm still really thankful to be here."

"Yes," she calls back. "Isn't that the miracle of it?"