I was asleep when our plane hit the runway, but the jolt brought me instantly awake. I looked out the window and saw the Rocky Mountains. What the fuck was I doing here? I wondered. It made no sense at all. I decided to call my attorney as soon as possible. Have him wire me some money to buy a huge albino Doberman. Denver is a national clearing house for stolen Dobermans; they come from all parts of the country.

Like those in the valley behind us, most people stand in sight of the spiritual mountains all their lives and never enter them, being content to listen to others who have been there and thus avoid the hardships. Some travel into the mountains accompanied by experienced guides who know the best and least dangerous routes by which they arrive at their destination. Still others, inexperienced and untrusting, attempt to make their own routes. Few of these are successful, but occasionally some, by sheer will and luck and grace, do make it. Once there they become more aware than any of the others that there's no single or fixed number of routes. There are as many routes as there are individual souls.

Going to the mountains is going home.

The distant mountains make one want to go on and on over the next ridge and over the one beyond. The call is that of a wilderness known only to a few. It is a call to adventure.

For love is like a journey in mountainous country, up through the clouds, and down into the shadows to an unknown destination.

Difficult roads often lead to beautiful destinations.

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; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.

A friend who is far away is sometimes much nearer than one who is at hand. Is not the mountain far more awe-inspiring and more clearly visible to one passing through the valley than to those who inhabit the mountain?

Over every mountain, there is a path, although it may not be seen from the valley.

Because mountains are high and broad, the way of riding the clouds is always reached in the mountains; the inconceivable power of soaring in the wind comes freely from the mountains

longing for the mountains

You who go in railways are necessarily shut up in long valleys and even sometimes by the wall of earth. Even those who bicycle or drive see these sights but rarely and with consecution, since roads also avoid climbing save where they are forced to it, as over certain passes. It is only by following the straight line onwards that anyone can pass from ridge to ridge and have this full picture of the way he has been.

For it is one thing to see the Land of Peace from a wooded ridge, and yet another to walk the road that leads to it.

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.