If I want shelter, I’ll have to pack it. If I want clothing, I’ll have to compress it. If I want oxygen, I’ll have to breathe a lot more deeply since air molecules are spaced far less densely on Wyoming mountaintops than on the humid plains of central Florida, where you can practically see them. Since hunting is out and I’m no fisherman, absolutely every calorie I intend to consume will have to be carried in. There will be no shower, no bath, no downy-thick mattress wrapped in high-count cotton sheets. No refrigerator, no sonic toothbrush, no emergency beer airdrop. It’s one thing to get away from it all and quite another to get away from absolutely everything. What was I thinking? Lurking in the background, barely acknowledged, is the nagging doubt that I might not be physically up to the challenge – not that I’m doing anything to rectify this potentially embarrassing condition. By refusing to deal with the nettlesome subject I manage to put off a proper fitness regimen to another day, which miraculously never arrives. Ordinarily my main form of exercise is bicycling, so occasionally I bike – which seems a lot more sensible than acting like a human rock in a tug of war with indefatigable gravity. My theory is that biking gives one wind whereas trotting up stairs laden with weight gives one only pain.

It turns out there’s a fatal flaw with the biking idea: It is this: When you cycle, you sit down. When you hike, you stand up. So biking may prove only obliquely helpful. In any case, once I’ve dismissed as unduly burdensome the whole concept of physical preparation, there seems little point in being further distracted by it. Besides, I have a backup plan: I blithely count on at least one participant proving even less robust.

Then out of nowhere – the general location in which men do their recreational thinking – an enticing contrary thought inspires me: I’ll have to acquire a lot of neat new stuff. And that, of course, means frequent trips to the Andy Thornal Company. By car, I might add.

I glance at my old camping gear – doubtless competent equipment in its day but now, sadly, at least 20 years on the wrong side of the time continuum – and think, man, is this ever a terrific excuse to load up on lot of new tax-deductible high tech hiking stuff. Thus to Andy Thornal Company I repair.