At times like this, it was easy to brush aside thoughts of his wife and daughter. Easy to forget marriage and having responsibilities. His life plan had not included marriage. Sarina had sent his blood racing, and a girl like Sarina you did not love and leave. He should have vanished from their home the next day, moved on, picked up a woman along the way, someone who expected no commitment. But he hadn’t.

Did he love Sarina? There were times he was sure he did, like the day Sarah was born. In that moment he had loved them fiercely. But now? He brushed those questions aside. He must concentrate on the task at hand.

Zachary pushed on until he reached a sun-filled glade abundant with wildflowers. Then he sank to the earth, leaned against a gnarled oak trunk, and closed his eyes. As he often did before falling asleep at night, Zachary imagined himself perched on a camel’s back, heading east away from Marrakech, in Morocco, toward the Atlas Mountains. Desert sands stretched before him; snow-capped peaks loomed on the horizon. He had visited friends in Marrakech, and from their porch watched the sunrise turn the snow-capped mountains golden. As that dream faded another came; he rode on horseback along the shores of Lake Baikal in southeastern Siberia.

As a boy he had discovered a nineteenth-century book, Siberia and the Exile System, by American engineer and explorer George Kennan. Kennan’s eloquent descriptions of Baikal—its depth and clarity, the pristine quality of the lake, the immense, breathtaking beauty of the surrounding forests and mountains, and the varied and abundant mammal and fish populations—had enthralled him and still did.

Sarina’s and the baby’s sweet faces floated into his mind, banishing daydreams. Guilt replaced wild longings. He loved his wife, and little Sarah touched his heart. He heard his mother’s gentle voice telling an impatient boy, “There’s a time for everything, my son.”

But for him, it seemed that there was never enough time. It was a lesson he must learn: patience. Zachary rose, brushed off bits of dirt, leaves, and bark, and continued upward. As he climbed, he stopped to check his compass. He was heading due north. Increasingly, the land revealed its secrets. A magnificent waterfall plunged into a ravine. He estimated the drop of the water to be seventy feet or more. He encountered streams, some no wider than the span of his jump, others too wide to leap across. Large areas of hardwood forest, a fortune in lumber, rose above him, and wide swaths of mixed hardwood and pines.