acres of the most untouched

By late spring, the time had come for a test. Thanks to a forest-ranger friend, I lucked into theperfect opportunity: a three-day fifty-mile running trip through Idaho’s River of No Return, twoand a half million  wilderness in the continental U.S. The setup wasperfect: our supplies would be hauled by a mule packer, so all that I and the other four runners hadto do was kick up fifteen miles of dirt a day from campsite to campsite
with her, he would sanction
everything at oncehe answered..

“I really didn’t know anything about the woods till I came to Idaho,” Jenni Blake began, as she ledus down a thin wisp of a dirt trail winding through the junipers. Watching her flow over the trailwith such teenage strength, it was hard to believe that nearly twenty years had passed since herarrival; at thirty-eight, Jenni still has the blonde bangs, winsome blue eyes, and lean, tan limbs of acollege frosh on summer break. Oddly, though, she’s more of a carefree kid now than she wasback then.