About ten years ago, during a season of great freedom, I went for a hike in the Scottish Highlands. I had been living for some months in Ireland, thumbing rides and climbing mountains, and I had taken the boat to the Knoydart Peninsula to see how far I could push things. One morning, I set out to climb Ladhar Bheinn, a trip I’d been told would last seven or eight hours. It took nearly eleven, a journey through a high sodden landscape still crusted in late-May snow that left me soaked through and starving. By the time I tumbled down through the pastureland, not a single piece of my clothing was dry, and a hole had formed in my boot. I met no one on the trail, no one knew where I was, and in that remote place I could not even have called for help. It remains one of the dumbest, most dangerous things I have done in my life. And I do not regret it.
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