Growing up, I played a game that eventually became a show called “Where in the World is Carmen San Diego,” whose apparent intent was to teach kids world geography, but whose unintended consequences created a small generation of trail hounds who love a cappella music.
Carmen San Diego started me on a lifelong pursuit of gypsy souls, from Davy Crockett to Anthony Bourdain. Following these intrepid people also delivered me to some of the best trails of my life. I remember reading John Muir’s “My Summer in the Sierras,” and then decades later having a pang of longing fulfilled as I came out of the Wawona Tunnel and saw Yosemite Valley for the first time. The John Muir Trail did not disappoint.
I read Edward Abbey’s “Desert Solitaire” while I chaplain in Idaho; a book that changed the course of my life, as I chose to go to school in Texas, not Virginia, since Arches National Park was on the way from Boise to Austin.
