En route, we trudged through mud-bottomed swamps; through dense, junglelike thickets of dwarf willow and alder; across spongy sphagnum moss; and over fields of tussocks, which were easily the worst of our hiking obstacles. Tussocks (or “nature’s herpes,” as I’d come to call them) are round, furry clumps of sedge that look like hairy green basketballs and are almost impossible to walk through without twisting an ankle and cursing maniacally.
