For many Americans, state parks provide the easiest and least expensive way to connect with nature.

The guide says the pictograph is one thousand years old, give or take one hundred. "You can't use carbon dating, because the paints are mineral based and not vegetable."

Get out of the mall and into the woods.

Though often remote, the Appalachian Trail was a route like any other. Ordinary roads ran near it and intersected it as it wound its way around towns, over rivers and across forested valleys. What was to stop me from tracking the trail by . . . car?