Static pages off root / main directory

Have a question, which will probably involve some programming stuff …
I recently set up a website DCWalkabout were I have a few static pages. I did them pretty much myself, before I even saw Techgnome’s wonderful static pages tutorial, but this doesn’t quite fit what I want exactly. He has his static pages in his root directory, and that is what his tutorial is all about. (Sweet tutorial, BTW .. very similar to what I did)
I would like to have my static pages off my root, but still you my root’s PHP to side menus, etc…
I am currently putting some material on Hiking and Pubbing around DC, and I would prefer to have them in their own separate directory with their own separate image library.
For example:
Hiking in – http://www.dcwalkabout.com/hiking/
Hiking Images in – http://www.dcwalkabout.com/hiking/images/
I like this way of setting up my hierarchy of directories. I tried this first when I was working on the pages, but got a couple of php errors. I wish had saved them, but didn’t. If someone would like me to reproduce them, I will for clarification.
So here are the questions
Can this be done and how?
If it can’t currently be done without some major hacking, is this something in the works for future versions?