Collected by Edwin Bernbaum
Director, Sacred Mountains Program
The Mountain Institute
Introduction
These inspirational passages can be used to enhance students' experiences of nature by providing multiple perspectives on the meaning of mountains. Bringing the different evocative associations of these passages to bear on features of the mountain landscape can deepen and enrich people's appreciation of them, much as several notes played together in a chord of music create a deeper, richer harmony. Drawing on different perspectives from cultures around the world can also help you as a teacher to connect with the interests and traditions of Americans of diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds, such as Native Americans, African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans.
These are general passages: it would be a good idea to find quotes and evocative prose and poetry written by others on the mountains and other natural features of your area - or, if you don't live in a mountainous place, of well-known mountains your students know of. After you have presented some of the passages, you might ask students what insights, ideas, and feelings their mountains evoke for them. The idea is to help them come up with their own views of the natural environment and what it can mean to them personally. The evocative associations of mountains have an extraordinary power to inspire people that you can draw on to make your lessons on other aspects of mountains, such as their geology and ecosystems, even more interesting and effective.
Rudyard Kipling, The Explorer
Something hidden. Go and find it.
Go and look behind the Ranges--
Something lost behind the Ranges.
Lost and waiting for you. Go! |
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John Muir on Blessings of Mountains
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 off like autumn leaves.
Muir on Becoming One with Nature
Brooding over some vast mountain landscape, or among the spiritual countenances of mountain flowers, our bodies disappear, our mortal coils come off without any shuffling, and we blend into the rest of Nature, utterly blind to the boundaries that measure human quantities into separate individuals.
Li Po, Chinese poet, Mountain and I
Up high all the birds have flown away,
A single cloud drifts off across the sky.
We settle down together, never tiring of each other,
Only the two of us, the mountain and I.
Kuo Hsi, Classical Chinese Artist, on Value of Mountains and Landscape Paintings
The din of the dusty world and the confined space of human habitations are what human nature habitually abhors: while, on the contrary, haze, mist, and the haunting spirits of the mountains are what human nature seeks, and yet can rarely find.
Psalm 121
I will lift up mine eyes unto the mountains:
From whence shall my help come?
My help cometh from the Lord,
Who made heaven and earth.
Psalm 125
They that trust in the Lord
Are as mount Zion, which cannot be removed, but abideth for ever.
As the mountains are round about Jerusalem,
So the Lord is round about His people from this time forth and for ever.
Psalm 43
O send out Thy light and Thy truth; let them lead me;
Let them bring me unto Thy holy mountain, and to Thy dwelling-places.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Swiss-French Philosopher
It is a general impression experienced by all men, even though they do not all observe it, that on high mountains, where the air is pure and subtle, one feels greater ease in breathing, more lightness in the body, greater serenity in the spirit. . . It seems that in rising above the dwellings of men, one leaves behind all low and earthly sentiments, and to the degree that one approaches the ethereal regions, the soul acquires something of their inalterable purity.
Henry David Thoreau on Wildness
We need the tonic of wildness . . . At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed, and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and titanic features . . .
Thoreau on Mountain Air
There is something in the mountain air that feeds the spirit and inspires. Our thoughts will be clearer, fresher, and more ethereal, as our sky….our understanding more comprehensive and broader, like our plains……our intellect generally on a grander scale, like our thunder and lightening, our rivers and mountains and forests.
George Mallory on Everest
So, if you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won't see why we go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to enjoy life. That is what life means and what life is for.
William Douglas, Supreme Court Justice, on Spirit of Mountains
A people who climb the ridges and sleep under the stars in high mountain meadows, who enter the forest and scale peaks, who explore glaciers and walk ridges buried deep in snow -- these people will give their country some of the indomitable spirit of the mountains.
Maurice Herzog on Climbing Annapurna
In overstepping our limitations, in touching the extreme boundaries of man's world, we have come to know something of its true splendor. In my worst moments of anguish, I seemed to discover the deep significance of existence of which till then I had been unaware. I saw that it was better to be true than to be strong. The marks of the ordeal are apparent on my body. I was saved and I had won my freedom. This freedom, which I shall never lose, has given me the assurance and serenity of a man who has fulfilled himself. It has given me the rare joy of loving that which I used to despise. A new and splendid life has opened out before me.
Isabella Bird, First Woman to climb Long's Peak
I was uplifted above a world of love, hate and storms of passion, for I was calm amidst the eternal silences, bathing in the living blue. For peace rested that one bright day on the mountain top.
Dogen, Japanese Zen Master, on Hidden Mountains
As for mountains, there are mountains hidden in jewels; there are mountains hidden in marshes, mountains hidden in the sky; there are mountains hidden in mountains. There is a study of mountains hidden in hiddenness.
Dogen on Loving Mountains
Although we say that mountains belong to the country, actually they belong to those who love them. When the mountains love their master, the wise and the virtuous inevitably enter the mountains. And when sages and wise men live in the mountains, because the mountains belong to them, trees and rocks flourish and abound, and the birds and beasts take on a supernatural excellence.
Kobo Daishi, Japanese sage, on Wandering in Mountains
The blue sky was the ceiling of his hut and the clouds hanging over the mountains were his curtains; he did not need to worry about where he lived or where he slept. In summer he opened his neck band in a relaxed mood and delighted in the gentle breezes as though he were a great king . . . Not being obliged to his father or elder brother and having no contact with his relatives, he wandered throughout the country like duckweed floating on water or dry grass blown by the wind.
Ansel Adams on Views of Mountains
We all move on the fringes of eternity and are sometimes granted vistas through the fabric of illusion.
Skanda Purana, Ancient Work of Hindu mythology, on the Himalaya (Himachal)
In the space of a hundred ages of the gods, I could not describe to you the glories of Himachal . . . As the dew is dried up by the morning sun, so are the sins of humankind by the sight of Himachal.
Milarepa, Tibet's Most Famous Yogi, on Mt. Kailas in Tibet
This is the great place of accomplished yogis;
Here one attains transcendent accomplishments.
There is no place more wonderful than this,
There is no place more marvelous than here.
Horace Benedict de Saussure, Swiss "Father of Alpinism," during his Ascent of Mont Blanc in 1788
"The soul of man is lifted up, a wider, nobler horizon is offered to his view;
surrounded by such silent majesty he seems to hear the very voice of Nature."
Percy Bysshe Shelley, British poet, on Mont Blanc
Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky,
Mont Blanc appears, -- still, snowy, and serene --
-- the power is there ...
The secret strength of things,
Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome
Of heaven is as a law, inhabits thee!
Hsieh Ling-yün, Chinese Poet
In the mountains all is pure, all is calm;
All complication is cut off.
Rare are they who know to listen;
Happy they who possess wisdom.
One pauses on ledges, one climbs to the foot of high clouds;
One sits in the depths of a gorge, one passes windy grottos.
Here is the realm of harmony and joy,
Where the past and the present become eternal.
Martin Luther King, Jr., "I have a dream" Speech
Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania! Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado! Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California! But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia! Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee! Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
Julius Nyerere, First President of Tanganyika (Tanzania) on Birth of the Nation in 1961 - Words Inscribed on Summit Plaque, Kilimanjaro
We will light a candle on top of Mount Kilimanjaro which will shine beyond our borders, giving hope where there is despair, love where there is hate, and dignity where before there was only humiliation.
Navajo Blessingway
Now I am long life, now happiness as I have ascended, ascended.
Before me it is blessed as I have ascended, behind me it is blessed as I ascended, I have ascended, o ye.
Rudolfo Anayo, Widely Regarded as the Founder of Chicano Literature
That's all he could see, the blue outline of the mountains, as if they were cut out of the sky and one could step through their outline into another dimension.
Simon Bolivar, the Liberator of South America, on the Impulse that Called him up to the Glaciers of Chimborazo
I came as if driven by the genius that animated me, and I grew weak as I touched with my head the cup of the sky: I had at my feet the deep shadows of the abyss. . .
Jim Enote, Zuni/Tewa
My grandmother told me that mountains are where cloud beings live. If we live the right way and say our prayers correctly the clouds will come and they will bring rain or snow to our crops. Rivers flow from mountains and the rivers are like umbilical cords leading us back to the mountains. She said when you are confused about life look to the horizon and you will see the mountains and you won't get lost.
Jerry Wolfe, Cherokee elder, on the Smoky Mountains
The Great Smoky Mountains are a sanctuary for the Cherokee people. We have always believed the mountains and streams provide all that we need for survival. We hold these mountains sacred, believing that the Cherokees were chosen to take care of the mountains as the mountains take care of us.
From "America the Beautiful" by Katherine Lee Bates
O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain.
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