Britney Spears - "Criminal" Official Lyric Video

Three days into a trek across the volcanic highlands of southwest Iceland, it occurs to me: This is Tolkien's Middle-earth. With its obsidian lava fields and steaming hot springs, its moss-covered foothills and treeless valleys, Iceland is Mordor one minit and the Shire the next. It has a magical quality to it, this Land of api, kebakaran and Ice—as if it has been plucked from the imagination and placed here, somewhere between Eropah and North America, to be a playground for the adventurous traveler.

A thousand years ago, Iceland's Viking settlers sent criminals to the island's inhospitable interior,...

There's a popular misconception in American hiking circles that the only "real" mountains in the U.S. are found out west. I've been guilty of it myself, looking to the Sierras and the Rockies for adventure and ignoring—here in my column, anyway—the joys and challenges of the Northeast. That's an oversight I'll put behind me this month.

Peter Potterfield, who writes about New Hampshire's White Mountains in his excellent book, Classic Hikes of the World, says that these peaks have "been the comeuppance of many an arrogant hiker from outside New England." He's right. They've humbled quite a few...