229 Quotes About Hiking

The trail will only provide if you accept its offer. All of it. You must leave home. You must be broken. It will cost you your entire life as you know it. And then, and only then, can you receive. What you receive will be far greater than anything you had or anything you lost. It will change you. It might even heal you.

Perhaps there is no thrill so great as that which comes with a walk in the freshness of morning air.

Hiking is the only slightly less ugly stepsister of running.

Under gold clouds, he pushed the limits of my body, setting a faster pace—some days surpassing forty rugged miles, unstopping through morning’s thick peach haze; noon’s warmth; red evening sun.

There is always an adventure waiting in the woods.

Set loose, a child would run down the paths, scramble up the rocks, lie on the earth. Grown-ups more often let their minds do the running, scrambling, and lying, but the emotion is shared. It feels good to be here.

I'd have to be impolite, an inconvenience, and sometimes awkward. But if I could commit, all that discomfort would add up to zap predatory threads like a Taser gun. I'd stun them. They'd bow to me. I'd let my no echo against the mountains. And better to feel bad for a moment saying no—and stop it—than to get harmed. I would take better care. That small word, no. I'd see its deity.

When we apply the lessons we've struggled for our whole lives to learn to the lives of people we love, our love becomes judgment—which is toxic. Our fear our daughters will fail leads us to fail them.

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