I am not so interested in ‘thru’ hiking, or it’s relative polarity of ‘section’ hiking. I feel like thru hiking’s contrast is not in hiking some smaller section at probably the same pace or attention, but rather a polarity of this very activity of passing through something that stands as a kind of mere background to our own activity. I seek instead the polarity of ‘into’ hiking—not passing through something, inattentive, but rather passing into something, wideawake—in this case nature. (And finding there, eventually, one’s-self, mirrored back. But I seek not to experience myself directly. It is nature I seek to find.)