In Backpacking with the Saints, Belden Lane describes the experience of hiking this way: Whenever I plunge into wilderness, my body and the environment move in and out of each other in an intimate pattern of exchange.9 I wade through water and inhale air filled with the scent of honeysuckle. I’m wrapped in cobwebs and pierced by briars. I swallow gnats drawn to the sweat on my body and feel the rocks on the trail through my boots. Where I “end” and everything else “begins” isn’t always clear. What seems to be “me” doesn’t stop at the fixed boundary of my skin.
