hiking

My parents love to hike.  I can remember being dragged all over the state to hike this and to hike that with promises that the saddle, summit, waterfall, etc. were "just over the next ridge."  I remember, in an attempt to pass time, singing Dona Nobes Pacem for hours with my sisters.  I remember climbing to the top of timp several times:  once with only Capri Suns to drink, once with a date that didn't say more than three words the entire time, and once when I lost my breakfast about a mile in.  Stewart Falls was always a favorite right along side Angel's Landing and the Narrows.  

As a kid I wondered what magic my parents found in walking.  It wasn't until I was a young adult that I discovered a beauty in the outdoors that was contagious and invigorating.  I now crave to be outside, to be climbing, to be breathing in the fresh air and scanning in the beauty of God's creations.  

I recently found this amazing quote in our Alaskan hiking book:

You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down . . . so why bother in the first place?  Just this: what is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above.  One climbs, one sees.  One decends, one sees no longer, but one has seen.  There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up.  When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.

--Rene Daumel, Mount Analogue