The author of this intensely personal collection of essays has backpacked into many of the country's wildest and most remote wildernesses. His stories of those trips make engrossing reading, but the book is as much about interior journeys as exterior ones, as the subtitle telegraphs. Temple writes elegant and thoughtful prose that has echoes of Loren Eiseley, Edward Abbey, Colin Fletcher and William Least Heat Moon. It is a journey into the soul that lies at the heart of this book.