We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us. Our flesh-and-bone tabernacle seems transparent as glass to the beauty about us, as if truly an inseparable part of it, thrilling with the air and trees, streams and rocks, in the waves of the sun, — a part of all nature, neither old nor young, sick nor well, but immortal.

For the lover of the grand in nature the mountains have singular fascination. The children of the mountain, too—the stern and impassive and the gentle —seem to have instilled into them the true spirit of the mist, and thus appeal to the nature lover more forcibly than the denizens of less romantic regions. The mountains attract at every season of the year—in winter, when their corries are buried deep under their snowy covering; in spring, when this snowy mantle has been broken by the strengthening sun, aided by soft breezes from the south; and in summer, when an occasional snowfield lingering here and there still reminds one of the winter that is past, but when the corries are clothed with grass of an exquisite green.

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.

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.

Every mountain is, rightly considered, an invitation to climb.

Wherever we go in the mountains, or indeed in any of God's wild fields, we find more than we seek.

take me into the mountains

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. Awakening from the stupefying effects of the vice of over-industry and the deadly apathy of luxury, they are trying as best they can to mix and enrich their own little ongoings with those of Nature, and to get rid of rust and disease.

The sun shines not on us but in us. The rivers flow not past, but through us, thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing. The trees wave and the flowers bloom in our bodies as well as our souls, and every bird song, wind song, and tremendous storm song of the rocks in the heart of the mountains is our song, our very own, and sings our love.

...
Suddenly, your voice
Calling out my name.
I call yours.
The echoes take us
To the heart of the mountains.
When the silence closes,
You say: Now that they
Have called our names back
The mountains can
Never forget us.

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. One fancies a heart like our own must be beating in every crystal and cell, and we feel like stopping to speak to the plants and animals as friendly fellow mountaineers. Nature as a poet, an enthusiastic workingman, becomes more and more visible the farther and higher we go; for the mountains are fountains — beginning places, however related to sources beyond mortal ken.

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.

In this wild mountain region of the 'where' beyond God there is an abyss full of play and feeling for all pure spirits.

Mountains are to the rest of the body of the earth, what violent muscular action is to the body of man. The muscles and tendons of its anatomy are, in the mountain, brought out with force and convulsive energy, full of expression, passion, and strength.