Topographies

[justkeephiking-blog]

True solitude is found in the wild places, where one is without human obligation....One’s inner voices become audible. One feels the attraction of one’s most intimate sources....In consequence, one responds more clearly to other lives. The more coherent one becomes within oneself as a creature, the more fully one enters into the communion of all creature

Wendell Berry

[justkeephiking-blog]

I’ve just completed Robert Macfarlane’s wonderful Mountains of the Mind: Adventures in Reaching the Summit and cannot begin to offer sufficient praise in my recommendation. It is emotionally compelling, well-researched and above all, elegantly written.  Dr. MacFarlane’s equally-compelling The Wild Places is also essential reading and represents a body of work that stands with the finest writing in the tradition of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden and Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.