Welcome to your wilderness!

I’m Cindy C and I will be your guide for your next wilderness adventure. David and I have been exploring wild places since our early hikes with the University of Arizona Ramblers in Tucson decades ago. Wilderness Need is based on our view that  people need wilderness—although it may not need us. We hope to fill a gap we’ve seen in the plethora of blogs, hike reports and jaw-dropping photos by offering reliable info and maps to create your own AWE: Alternative Wilderness Explorations! We’ve found wilderness around the country are overused in some areas and rarely visited in others.

In this blog I will share my  personal misadventures trying to keep up with an ageless mountain goat (David) in my own aging, arthritic, awkward body. Yes, I have always crept down steep slippery places and inched my way across logs. In one memorable hike in flooded Ramsey’s Draft Wilderness in Virginia, my then-12-year-old daughter led me by the hand across a zig-zag path of logs over raging Ramsey’s Creek. Now I am older, I just creep and inch a little slower. But I may be first up the hill where a slow heart, good lungs and drive supersedes bad joints.

Besides hiking woes, I might also weigh in on hiking how-tos, spiritual aspects of wild places, characters on the trail, government management conundrums, society and the art and pain of writing. I promise not to take myself too seriously. Hope you won’t either.