The John Muir Trail runs 220 miles through the Sierra Nevada, the tallest mountain range in the contiguous United States, and this film follows a group of young students walking it end to end, retracing the route Muir himself once covered on foot. The camera stays with them through the physical grind of the trek as much as the scenery, catching exhaustion and elation along with granite peaks and alpine lakes in high-definition footage. Yosemite Park Ranger Shelton Johnson, previously featured in Ken Burns' The National Parks, appears throughout offering reflections on the trail's history and what wilderness like this means to the people who spend time in it. Director Pete Bell and cinematographer Leon Godwin shoot the Range of Light without narration doing the heavy lifting, letting the landscape and the students' own reactions carry the film. The soundtrack pulls from indie bands including Megafaun, Gayngs, and Mandolin Orange, giving the trek a contemporary score rather than a nature-documentary one. It plays as a plain record of one long walk and what it costs and gives back.