Recently retired from a career as an academic, Hal Robertson has become increasingly disenchanted with the values that have emerged in American society over the past few decades and is seriously considering a move to Europe to live out the coming years. A gnawing uncertainty, however, compels him to ponder this inclination during a week of backpacking in Washington's North Cascades. There, as he wanders through the magnificent Pasayten Wilderness of the Okanogan National Forest, he contemplates his impressions of life in Western Europe and his discontents with contemporary America. A consideration of the pervasive influence of Corporate America, competition as a divisive influence in American society, and consumerism as the new American religion leads him to examine the role of religion itself and that of science as its perpetual foil. This propels him toward an exploration of cosmology, the nature of human consciousness, and the meaning of artistic creativity as a defining characteristic of human beings that simply defies any materialistic, reductionist explanation. Finally, he reviews his own values according to what experience and observation have taught him and leaves the wilderness knowing not only what he will do, but what he must do.