“The mountains are calling, and I must go.”

While visiting Shenandoah National Park, I saw a bumper sticker with the famous quote, “the mountains are calling, and I must go.” It comes from writer and mountaineer, John Muir, who first penned the words in a letter to his sister Sarah. 

While hiking portions of the Appalachian Trail, I was grateful to indigenous peoples and naturalists. Without their work, the land and national parks we love wouldn’t be here today.

“I am hopelessly and forever a mountaineer…

Civilization and fever and all the morbidness that has been hooted at me has not dimmed my glacial eye, and I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature’s loveliness.”  -John Muir.