Honestly, I have no legitimate excuse for not having returned. The experience still calls like a siren song playing softly in the background. Snow-capped peaks and glaciers. Expansive vistas of low-country lakes surrounded by ghostly granite, golden grasses, and solemn conifers. Hot springs and chaparral scrublands. Mountain quail. And honest-to-God golden trout. The jewel of California's Sierra Nevada Range.

It was a bucket-list trip. One I had dreamed of for how many years, I am unsure. We had "golden trout" in Appalachia, but they were rainbow trout genetically selected and bred in a h...