\u201cThe mountains are calling, and I must go,\u201d wrote John Muir.<\/p>\n
How do mountains call us?<\/p>\n
Thoreau said it\u2019s in the air: \u201cThere is something in the mountain air that feeds the spirit and inspires.\u201d<\/p>\n
So what is that \u201csomething\u201d? I suppose there are as many answers to the question as there are people who love walking in the mountains. But for me?<\/p>\n
Rebecca Solnit (Wanderlust<\/em>) wrote that walking is \u201chow the body measures itself against the earth.\u201d Certainly seeing the mountains does that. \u201cThe earth is large,\u201d said Solnit, \u201cand we are not.\u201d So mountains help us see our smallness next to nature\u2019s grandeur. It\u2019s a humbling thing. But there\u2019s more.<\/p>\n One can climb<\/em> a mountain. Something\/someone small can conquer something large (if the mountain let\u2019s you of course\u2014the subject of my next blog). I\u2019m pretty sure that\u2019s why I do it. It\u2019s not a contest with the mountain and certainly not with my hiking buddies but with myself (who I am now versus who I can become on this day, in this place).<\/p>\n Sir Edmund Hillary, one of the first two to summit Everest, said it best:<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n **Walking in the mountains can turn hazardous–my next blog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cThe mountains are calling, and I must go,\u201d wrote John Muir. How do mountains call us? Thoreau said it\u2019s in the air: \u201cThere is something in the mountain air that feeds the spirit and inspires.\u201d So what is that \u201csomething\u201d? I suppose there are as many answers to the question as there are people who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3461"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3463,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3461\/revisions\/3463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}