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are countless routes one can take to the solution, but some are elegant and others are not.
    My navigational woes were compounded tenfold by the problem of what Newfoundlanders call “Tuckamore”—groves of spruce and fir that have been dwarfed by strong winds. From afar, the trees resemble a scrum of fairy-tale hags, all hunches and claws. Like most elfinwood trees, they can grow for centuries without ever reaching any higher than one’s chin. What they lack in height, they gain in hardiness.
    Countless times on my hike, I would reach a section where a small grove of Tuckamore stood between me and where I needed to be. I would glance at my watch to mark the time, estimating it should takeno more than ten minutes to cross. Then I would take a deep breath and enter the low green copse. It was like dipping into a nightmare. Suddenly the air was dark, and the space apportioned chaotically. As I fought to take each step, branches clawed red gashes into my skin and pulled the water bottles from the pockets of my backpack. Out of frustration, I tried stomping on the trees, to break them, or at least to punish them, but to no avail; they sprang back, unharmed. Here and there a set of moose or caribou prints would form a narrow, muddy game trail, but after a short while it would dwindle or veer astray. Off to the left, a pocket of sunlight would appear, and I would follow it, only to find a pool of mud. It was like moving through a labyrinth that left you no choice but to, from time to time, lower your shoulder and charge your way through the walls .
    At last, exhausted and bleeding, I would emerge. My watch would reveal that an hour had passed, and I had covered no more than fifty yards.
    Eventually, I learned to pick my way through these mazes by watching the movements of the moose. One trick moose use is to follow waterways, which, though muddy, often find the most expedient path through a thicket. They also walk with high, arching steps to flatten the branches underfoot. It was in perfecting this technique that I came to my greatest revelation: at one point near the end of the hike, I found that by counterintuitively selecting the densest bunches of Tuckamore, I could actually lift myself up and walk along the tops of the trees like a wuxia warrior.
    By nightfall on the second day, I was at least two miles off course. It had already taken me a day longer than I had expected to hike the mere sixteen miles, and not once had I spent the night on level ground or near fresh water.
    All night a light rain fell. Around dawn, I awoke from my bivouac high atop a ridge to observe a wide band of hyacinth sky moving toward me. At first I perceived this lovely sight as a break in the cloudsand lay back down to sleep. But as I turned back to my sleeping bag, I noticed the purple stripe was finely veined with lightning. It was not clear sky, I realized, but a massive storm cloud stretching from one end of the horizon to the other. It let out a soft digestive growl.
    Within the space of a half hour, the storm cloud rushed overhead. The air was crazed with rain. Fearing a lightning strike, I scrambled out of my sleeping bag, out from under my tarp, and down to the lowest point I could find. There I crouched on my sleeping mat on the balls of my feet, hands over my head, shaking and drenched, as delicate strings of light detonated all around me.
    For the better part of an hour, awash in mounting waves of tympanic rumble, I had time to reconsider the merits of hiking. Stripped of its Romantic finery, the wild ceased to inspire; only a gauzy scrim separated sublimity and horror. Jacques Cartier, upon visiting this island in 1534, declared that he was “inclined to believe that this is the land God gave to Cain.” He was right. It was a dark and pestilential place. The apparent beauty was only a ruse to lure you into its flytrap maw. I vowed to myself that if I made it out of this alive, I would never hike again.
    Upon seeing