229 Quotes About Hiking

Going barefoot in the forest is a very sensuous and a pleasurable experience. For some of us it is almost a mystical experience. I know that I dreamt of it long before I ever durst try it. It is also an experience that brings into question our entire relationship with nature in a way that disturbs and challenges our ideas about ourselves as civilized beings.

If you face the rest of your life with the spirit you show on the trail, it will have no choice but to yield the same kind of memories and dreams.

There is of course a deep spiritual need which the pilgrimage seems to satisfy, particularly for those hardy enough to tackle the journey on foot.

A significant fraction of thru-hikers reach Katahdin, then turn around and start back to Georgia. They just can't stop walking, which kind of makes you wonder.

After the war, however, in the early 1920s, the government had launched a series of advertisements aimed at getting the population out into the fresh air, encouraging people to go hill walking, which some master of the slogan had abbreviated to hiking.

Most of the time I am sunk in thought, but at some point on each walk there comes a moment when I look up and notice, with a kind of first-time astonishment, the amazing complex delicacy of the words, the casual ease with which elemental things come together to form a composition that is--whatever the season, wherever I put my besotted gaze--perfect.

...observers, by nature, had to create a story to understand why one would set out on foot, leaving the shelters we build to plant us in civilization and set us apart from the world, the cars and houses and offices. To follow a path great distances, to open oneself to the world and a multitude of unexpected experiences, to voluntarily face the wrath of nature unprotected, was difficult to understand.

O planini se govori kao o prostoru slobode. Samo odete gore, kaže se, i svi okovi spadnu s vas, sve brige nestanu, postanete slobodni. Ali, kako u planini može biti slobodan netko tko nije slobodan u gradu?

Na Velebitu sam se često susretao licem u lice s oblacima. Koji su me put znali otjerati s planine. Što ću ovdje, mislio sam, kad ništa ne vidim. Kasnije sam shvatio da ne moram uvijek gledati očima.