All trails are one trail.

I am walking down the Cowles Mountain path in the moonlight. Eastern San Diego at night stretches out in front of me: roads, streetlights, dark patches where mission trails park worms through the houses and strip malls, and the glass surface of Lake Murray a different shade of black than the rest.

The angle of the trail, the way it winds out above the town, the sound of my companions footsteps behind me, the way the trail sometimes disappears right in front of me, and I have to pick it out, in the dark, among the other clearings in the brush-- these things are all familiar. I am hiking the Blue Hills trail with Mike, or is it the Middlesex Fells? I am in the hills of the Gila, in knee deep snow, watching the sunset as I grow cold, and wondering where I can pitch my tent. I am with Casey, running through the paths that crisscross behind the office parks and housing developments in Carlsbad, jumping over the occasional ravine (and here in the present, as always when out on the trail, I feel, and this time resist, the urge run, to cover the ground laid out in front of me, branches whisking past me, and the crunch crunch crunch of my footsteps in the dirt). I am in Chitakwa with Donna, Cuyamaka with Karen, Joshua Tree with Brian, Death Valley, alone.

All hikes are one hike, all trails are the same, because on the trail, I feel the same. I remember now why I do this, and that I should go more often.

I gently chide myself for not doing this more. There should be more trails on this list.