Muir’s Sierra follows two novices (me and my husband) as we journey (limp) along 214 miles of the JMT.

John Muir had a particular disdain for the phrase “to hike.” He called it “vile,” and recommended instead the word saunter, derived from the French Saintete Terre, or Holy Land. He admonished one hurried fellow adventurer, saying, “You should saunter through the Sierra, because this is a holy land, if ever there was one.”

Holy indeed. But my saunter through the Sierra has been more like a limp.

“Wake up, Stone, it’s midnight. Time to go,” says my husband, David, as he snaps on his headlamp. A crisp zip of his jacket sends my head recoiling into my sleeping bag like a turtle stubborn in its shell. Bliss, until the sneaky, sweet smell of hot chocolate wafts its way from the camp stove and coaxes me out. “Couldn’t have a better night,” he encourages.

Indeed, it is an ideal night to ascend Mount Whitney. But it will be bittersweet, the culmination of our three-week journey along the John Muir Trail. I wonder if it is wise, winding to Whitney’s summit by moonlight beside sheer drops. No, not wise. But what a finish.

Over the years David and I had dreamed about the Sierra backcountry and its John Muir Trail, a 211-mile hike from California’s Yosemite Valley to the top of Mount Whitney. The JMT, as it is affectionately known, winds through three national parks and holds some of the most spectacular mountain scenery in the United States. In 1868, John Muir gazed awestruck at the Sierra for the first time and christened the mountains “The Range of Light” — not so much reflecting light, he said, but composed of it.

I sit up and peek out at Whitney’s looming climb and recall standing atop Half Dome in Yosemite Valley, the first summit of our saunter. Far from the welcoming images I’d seen of pristine pocket lakes and wildflowers, I saw granite rolled out before me like a cold sea, beckoning with a bold dare.

We weren’t hard-core mountaineers, just weekend backpackers longing for nature to wash over us day after day.

Now, on this last night, some half a million footsteps later, I look through our journals, written each night on the back of a topographical map. As my fingers trace the map’s contour lines, images of the trail wash over me.

Passing beneath the dappled light of silver pine and fir, as forests opened up and cast their cool breath upon meadows drenched in Sierra buttercup, Indian paintbrush and larkspur. Water splashing life into weary limbs as I crossed carefree, crystalline rivers rock by rock. Traversing brilliant snow-packed slopes sliced by cobalt skies — colors juxtaposed as starkly as in a Matisse paper cut.

Over here Cathedral Peaks, over there a lake tucked in among pines. And then to descend from sky to earth, finally to rest, alone, in a place of our choosing beside a waterfall or on a bed of pine. Sunrise, stars, silence, the comfort of simple routine.

Some criticize the John Muir Trail for being too well traveled, even dubbing it “The John Muir Highway.” The JMT is a wilderness experience, but not a solitary one.

Surprisingly, this was true even in John Muir’s day. Not everyone explored as Muir did, alone and with the barest essentials. In fact, he so loved these mountains that, as the Sierra Club’s founding president, Muir endeavored to preserve them by introducing as many people as possible to their splendor. En masse, parties as large as two hundred left civilized society for the Sierra wilds.

Those earliest explorations inspired our nation’s first generation of environmentalists, led to the protection of the Sierras, and, in 1915, one year after Muir’s death, to the dedication of the John Muir Trail.

I zip up my pack, toss it out the tent door and join the others. If absolute solitude is not a merit of the JMT, camaraderie is. We have become a close group of like-minded adventurers sharing a love affair with this trail. Of course, like every love affair, things weren’t always so great.

Flashback: Mile 97, not quite halfway.

I’m sitting in the middle of Deer Creek. Tears stream down my face. I glance at my feet, horrified to discover they now resemble something out of “The Elephant Man.” My favorite lucky boots have not proved up to the task. They’ve had enough, and are now wreaking havoc on my feet. “I can’t make it, David. Every step is a nightmare. We have to go home.” “We’ve done great,” he reassures me. “A hundred miles. We’ve had an amazing time. We can pack out tomorrow.” “Quit?” I said. “How could you suggest such a thing?”

Mercifully, the John Muir Trail is too long for anyone to carry everything needed for the entire trip, so one is forced to take necessary detours to pick up fresh provisions at resupply stops along the way.

So I perfected my hobble and a day later found myself on a water taxi gliding, as if on a magic carpet, across Lake Thomas Edison, headed to Vermilion Valley Resort resupply. In those two reenergizing days among friends, we devoured each other’s stories with the same hunger that we showered and ravaged stacks of mouthwatering hotcakes.

Nights, we gathered around the campfire. You could almost get a sense of what it must have been like in the early 1900s during those first Sierra Club High Trips. The old photos show men sporting broad-brimmed hats and rakish looks. The women had shed corsets and cumbersome skirts for the “freedom costume,” hiking in knee-high leather boots and bloomers. Mavericks all.

On this last night, as we face Whitney, I try to evoke their pioneering spirits, but all I can muster is that this 14,495-foot rock is the one thing that stands between me and a chocolate shake. Thankfully, the full moon shines an eerie blue-white light and works its magic. My feet sense what I cannot see as we wind our way up Whitney’s 3,000 vertical feet of hairpin switchbacks.

After three hypnotic miles and a final push, we are there, our feet firmly planted on top of the tallest piece of earth in the continental United States.

The warmth is whipped away by the cold, brittle air. So David and I wrap ourselves in a sleeping bag and wait for a day we aren’t sure we want to begin.

Dawn’s light brushes the mountains, unfolding before us in muted shades of pink, purple and blue. I start to cry, out of exultation, pride, relief and gratitude. Whether or not my 21-day limp has done justice to John Muir’s idea of a proper saunter, like those early explorers, I too have been transformed.