From the rim of the hot springs, I languidly observed the approaching doe, who appeared interested in the delicate, soft grasses at the water’s edge. Two fawns crept up timidly behind her. With a start, the mother finally recognized the human presence and snorted sharply to her children to keep them back. She needn’t have bothered; I was scarcely interested in causing trouble, and my muscles were so relaxed from exposure to the steaming waters, I couldn’t have left the pool hastily if my life depended on it.

I had found paradise. The trailhead was twenty miles distant, and my job required me to report for duty in less than five days, but I was content to postpone the return journey while my body recuperated from three days of overexertion in the Sierra high country. The only labor I allowed myself on the first morning was to construct a granite throne within the largest hot spring pool, from which I could thumb through a paperback novel and enjoy the simple pleasures of being both warm and clean in the backcountry.

The afternoon was spent writing notes and drifting across a nearby pond on a discarded raft, traveling wherever the winds would take me. The pond was deep and groundwater-fed, with crystal-clear waters that allowed me to look down as I floated and see great aquatic plant forests rising up from the depths. I was entranced by the illusion of flight, feeling like a bird that was skimming silently above the treetops. Below, the drowned branches swayed gently back and forth, as if stirred by a silent, ghostly breeze.

Temperatures in the valley plunged soon after sundown, and all through the night, steam from the hot springs drifted across the meadows and settled as frost upon the grasses and willow leaves. I awoke the next morning to a silvery landscape, to which color was restored only after the sun had risen high into the sapphire sky. The ice had grown thick inside my water bottle, so I set it in a sunbeam to thaw, knocked chunks of icy debris from my cookpot and began dismantling my tent in preparation for a long day on the trail. Civilization was still distant, but my body felt re-energized after 36 hours of spa treatments; blisters were healed, overused tendons had begun to restitch themselves, and enough liquid heat had penetrated my limbs for my tired muscles to relax and regain their vitality.

For two days I strode through a widening canyon rimmed on both sides by towers of white, broken granite. The terrain beneath looked raw and unweathered, except where boulders retained the polish they were given during the last ice age, when glaciers made their inexorable descent down these valleys. Though the sun shone brightly upon the bleached mountain faces, I felt strangely vulnerable to a change in the weather, and uneasy about traveling so close to the end of the comfortable hiking season. The next autumn snowstorm was probably weeks away, but it seemed as if the specter of winter was lurking just beyond the northern ridgeline. In the Sierra Nevadas, walking the thin edge between summer and winter is a risky endeavor that could leave you in severe need of a pair of snowshoes.

But thankfully, the weather held. I descended Paiute Pass and reached the trailhead through a tunnel of diminutive aspen trees. Their yellow-green leaves shimmered in the gentle breeze, waving me goodbye, as the wind gave voice to their soft whispers of good wishes.

I threw my pack into the back of the Jeep, sat behind the driver’s wheel and immediately felt torn … reluctant to leave when the aspen forests were beginning to gild the mountain slopes with bright ribbons of gold and amber. But two days and a tank of gas later, I was 300 miles closer to home, with the familiar sight of the Sierra Madre Range coming into view through the cracked windshield. Strangely, the sandstone ridges and peaks looked half as big as I remembered them. And when I stepped into my living room, the space appeared twice as big as before, probably due to the hours spent curled up inside cramped tents over the preceding months.