IS THERE A WILD ANIMAL WITHIN YOU? He's a high school PE teacher. A water-polo player, a surfer, a swimmer. He spends his winters in San Francisco, working and living in the city, and his summers in the mountains, backpacking and hunting and fishing and living off the land. Engaged to be married now, Toby McAllister knows that being gone all summer is off the table. How long is he going to be gone? A couple of weeks. A couple of weeks? Toby can't give his fiancee a definitive answer. "That's exactly the opposite of what this is all about," he explains to her. He's going to get away from things: going to get away from schedules, going to get away from tasks, going to get away from having to do certain things by certain times. He's returning to the wilds where he can just live for a while, the way man was meant to live, though in the end he finally consents to be gone for no more than three weeks. What can he do about it? He loves her, and he's moving into a new phase of life now. Heading off on the trail, glad to be on the trail, Toby can't shake the feeling that someone is watching him. Someone, or something. Watching him, and following him. He turns around several times and looks back, but maybe this is just getting used to the wilds again. Or maybe it's a bobcat tracking him, like he'd been tracked by a bobcat once before. What Toby doesn't know is that he's about to embark on the greatest adventure that he's ever been on in his life --- an adventure from which he may never return."