Quotes on Hiking

It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.

Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity.

An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.

When the sun is shining I can do anything; no mountain is too high, no trouble too difficult to overcome.

Climbing to the top demands strength, whether it is to the top of Mount Everest or to the top of your career.

First, if it is true that a spatial order organizes an ensemble of possibilities (e.g., by a place in which one can move) and interdictions (e.g., by a wall that prevents one from going further), than the walked actualizes some of these possibilities. In that way, he makes them exist as well as emerge. But he also moves them about and he invents others, since the crossing, drifting away, or improvisation of walking privilege, transform, or abandon spatial elements.

All paths lead nowhere, so it is important to choose a path that has heart.

Never measure the height of a mountain until you have reached the top. Then you will see how low it was.

Consider what you want to do in relation to what you are capable of doing. Climbing is, above all, a matter of integrity.

Great men are rarely isolated mountain-peaks; they are the summits of ranges.

All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.

All my writing is about the recognition that there is no single reality. But the beauty of it is that you nevertheless go on, walking towards utopia, which may not exist, on a bridge which might end before you reach the other side.

[Walking] is the perfect way of moving if you want to see into the life of things. It is the one way of freedom. If you go to a place on anything but your own feet you are taken there too fast, and miss a thousand delicate joys that were waiting for you by the wayside.

It is a great art to saunter !

Mountains are not stadiums where I satisfy my ambition to achieve, they are the cathedrals where I practice my religion.

Perhaps walking is best imagined as an 'indicator species,' to use an ecologist's term. An indicator species signifies the health of an ecosystem, and its endangerment or diminishment can be an early warning sign of systemic trouble. Walking is an indicator species for various kinds of freedom and pleasures: free time, free and alluring space, and unhindered bodies.

The mountains are calling and I must go.

Walking . . . is how the body measures itself against the earth.

Walks. The body advances, while the mind flutters around it like a bird.

My life is very exciting now. Nostalgia for what? It's like climbing a staircase. I'm on the top of the staircase, I look behind and see the steps. That's where I was. We're here right now. Tomorrow, we'll be someplace else. So why nostalgia?

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.