CANADIAN ROCKIES
Humanity clings to the myth of permanence. Hiking frees you from it. You step out of the edifice known as "my life." You enter a wild vastness you cannot own, where even your tentsite is borrowed for the night. You’re in motion, but neither fleeing nor chasing. And the adventure itself is ephemeral. So when you daydream of hiking, you’re recalling the unattached contentment you feel simply walking the Earth. You're evoking your primordial lightness of being.
Nothing you can say in the wilds is as important as what you can hear, if you listen.
Revel in your genetic inheritance. Because when you’re not being challenged — by predators, the weather, the terrain — a couple million years of evolution are squandered.
When your body takes your brain for a ride, it just stares calmly out the window.
Buddhists refer to our incessant, mental chatter as “monkey mind.” It’s pointless distraction and futile worrying.
It keeps us anxiously fixated on the past or future, preventing us from living fully in the present moment.
They quell monkey mind by meditating. You can also do it by hiking.
That’s why hikers—those for whom hiking is a bright, strong thread in the fabric of their lives—are authentic, without pretense or facade. Rarely will you meet a devoted hiker who’s a monster of self-regard.
Hiking whittles away at people, chipping them down to their essence.
The tall, slender towers on a mosque are minarets.
Their needlepoint shape is intended to pierce the sky, allowing the prayers of faithful Muslims to rise heavenward to Allah. Mountain devotees might attribute a similar purpose to the peaks they worshipfully ascend.
When approaching a summit, loft your reverent thoughts into the firmament.
MOUNTAINS TALK
canyons listen
Talking politics on the trail is dragging trash into the wilderness.
Lakes are to hikers what sticks are to dogs. No matter how far they're tossed out there, we chase ‘em down and find ‘em.
Is it because lakes invite us
to swim or fish? Because they
grant panoramas of surrounding
mountains? Because they serve as
destinations affording a definitive
sense of arrival? Yes, and more.
The irresistible gravity of lakes
is their inherent calmness.
We live complex, frenetic lives. Even the forests we hike through are
visually busy. But lakes are islands of stillness where we stop for rest and refreshment—physical of course, but also mental.
Reaching a lake at trail's end douses the fire of thought.
Wildlands are off-leash parks for your imagination.