Stacey Waring is a retired psychologist from Virginia who has spent many decades enjoying mountain trails in various parts of the country. In 1980, she was a member of Hikanation, one of the first organized backpacking treks across America and has since hiked sections of the Appalachian Trail, John Muir Trail and the Colorado Trail, in the White Mountains and the mountains of Italy and Switzerland. She has taught backpacking in community college and at REI, where she was an outdoors specialist, and enjoys freelance writing, mosaics, volunteering and traveling. (Photo: Courtesy of Stacey Waring)