When Michael Crichton and his wife Sherri first started dating, all they did was hike. Every weekend there they were, taking in the scenery from the coasts of California to the mountains of Hawaii. The island of Kauai was their favorite place, its rivers carving through volcanic rock and steep, jagged cliffs cutting the sky. The couple would wake before dawn to be first ones out on the trails, and together they’d take in the sunrise.
Those miles were sacred—and one of the few times that Sherri could get a window into Michael’s writing process. It was the early 2000s, and Michael was already a literary phenomenon and bona fide screenwriting machine with novels and movie adaptations that made millions and spun franchises that continue today. Chief among them: and At any given moment, he could be
