High Sierra Camps

It was twilight beside the Gudenaa River in Jutland, Denmark's northernmost province that juts up toward Norway and Sweden. We were sharing the campsite with a young Danish couple who were also paddling a canoe on the gentle Gudenaa through the flowering countryside that has not changed greatly since Hans Christian Andersen wandered its byways. The young Danes had invited us to join them for dinner.

BY day, you gape at falling water and soaring granite. But when night comes, do you stoke a campfire or repair to a formal dining room? Sleep on the ground or in an upstairs suite? These were questions for John Muir in the 19th century -- you didn't think he slept every night under the stars, did you? -- and they're questions now. Given the dwindling of park lodgings in the last century, you could say these choices are simpler today.

Bouncing along a twisting, potholed dirt road, Guy Pence appears oblivious to the mountain trail's crumbling edges and hairpin turns. The tires of his government-issue Jeep are inches from a sheer drop, but Pence is busy scanning the forest around him. The fire came over the hill right there, he explains. Burned 18,000 acres in August, 1994. Before it hit, his people had a timber sale to reduce overgrowth.