“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.”

― John Muir, The Mountains of California

Any self-respecting blog post about walking should really contain at least one quote from the Scottish-American naturalist John Muir, even if by its sheer eloquence it does render the rest of the blog irrelevant. Muir was probably the first proponent of walking in the outdoors as a leisure activity, an environmental pioneer and true multidisciplinary natural historian, and was behind the concept of national parks. Hikers owe a lot to John Muir, even if he was contemptuous of the word itself:

“I don’t like either the word [hike] or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains – not ‘hike!’ Do you know the origin of that word saunter? It’s a beautiful word. Away back in the middle ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going they would reply, ‘A la sainte terre’, ‘To the Holy Land.’ And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not ‘hike’ through them.”

The word saunter nowadays is more frequently used to describe a slow walk, taking your time, an easy pace. Leisurely, perhaps. In the fast-paced modern world we inhabit, where most of us fly too frequently, drive too fast and even information travels at the speed of light, sauntering is a luxury. We just don’t have time to take a day – a whole day! – to explore somewhere on foot. Maybe we lack the skills, or the confidence, or the kit, or maybe we’ve just lost interest.

But walking – or hiking, or sauntering if you prefer – is so inherently a human activity that I would argue it’s such an essential one that we are profoundly diminished without. For the first half a million years or so of human evolution we were hunter-gatherers and we only started to put down roots 11,000 years ago. We only shut ourselves into towns and cities and made our homes draught free very recently. As a species we are designed to be out there. I believe even our love for high places stems from an evolutionary need to be able to scan the landscape for threats, the feeling of contentment arising from vantage points where predators could be more easily spotted than in the valleys and forests. Inherently, we are more content and happy when we are outdoors. And who knows what might happen when we get out there?

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

JRR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings

Enjoy taking a hike today and if you’ve enjoyed this post please let us know in the comments below!