JOSHUA M. POWELL

I wondered to myself about the person who came up with the expression "People in hell want ice water." Who are these anonymous men and women who coin a phrase that lives on long after they have passed? Do they know in their lifetime that they've created an idiom that will stand the test of time, passed on from one generation to the next? Such are the thoughts that fill one's head when hiking for days on end. Steinbeck eloquently explained such wanderings of the mind in Travel

Throughout the day hikers slowly funneled into Sierra City and I wondered what the locals thought of us infiltrating their town. A hip, young couple entered the store, most likely passing through on a road trip. The woman was dressed in an affected 1950s style, with bleached blonde hair, horn rim glasses and oddly fitting jeans pulled halfway up her torso. The man's affectation was that of a blue-collar type. He had on a flannel shirt, stiff, denim jeans and a matching denim

"Now and then Pilon and Big Joe passed other searchers who wandered restlessly, zig-zagging among the pines. Their heads were down and they moved silently and passed no greeting. Who could say whether all of them were really living men?" Steinbeck, Tortilla Flat Outside I could see the wind blowing the rain and mist sideways. We had all slept in, while avoiding thoughts of all those poor souls packing up their tents in the terrible weather. It seemed almost too easy, being ab

It's an odd feeling after the luxuries of town to suddenly find yourself back on the trail, exactly where you left off a day or more ago. At those moments it often felt to me as if I were still tethered to civilization by a giant rubber band. It would stretch and stretch throughout the day until finally sometime in the late afternoon it would snap and release me and I would once again fall back into the familiar rhythm of life on the trail. Heading north from Echo Summit, I p

I turned onto the flat spur trail that would take me towards Mammoth Lakes and practically broke into a sprint, passing day hikers and fishermen and feeling grateful for the lack of any drastic elevation change. There would be no large climb the following day as I returned from my town visit, my pack weighed down with food. I emerged from the forest into a world covered in asphalt and concrete, just as the trolley was coming to a stop. Hockey was already at the curb and cried

I hiked along in the early morning, waiting for the sun to rise over the nearest ridge. My shadow soon appeared on the grass to my side, a companion hiking along next to me. I encountered a deer and we stood silently, our eyes locked on one another for several seconds. Then it twitched, leapt into the air with all four legs tucked tight into its body and bounded off into the trees. Memories of my childhood seemed to flood my mind. Is there a correlation between how we perceiv