This is not a book about a great mountaineer, challenging what is conceived to be possible, in a coliseum of battle with nature, in its most sublime and terrifying aspect. It is a book about an amateur; a nitwit if you have it, who blunders and blusters his way through some of the most beautiful, but far friendlier gardens of wonder that the Pacific Southwest has to offer. This is not a compendium of tales of conquest, it is the joyous remembrances of a fool, but one desperately in love with wild and sacred places, that loves to paint pictures with words.